


heavy lightness (feather of lead)

by heyfightme, Omgpieplease (SceneryTurnedWicked)



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Anxiety, Blood and Injury, Concussions, Fights, Inspired by Romeo and Juliet, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Minor Injuries, Recreational Drug Use, Serious Injuries, Sports, Star-crossed, Violence, no one dies, not a one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-01-25 09:52:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12528656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heyfightme/pseuds/heyfightme, https://archiveofourown.org/users/SceneryTurnedWicked/pseuds/Omgpieplease
Summary: “So you’re just going to leave me completely unsatisfied?”The words make the back of Bitty’s neck prickle, his fears from earlier scratching again at the periphery of his brain, but there’s nothing harsh in Jack’s tone. He sounds wholly unaggressive, his voice rather carrying the roundness of longing. Of yearning, even. Bitty turns back to him, and finds that Jack has stood as well, arms hanging listlessly at his sides and a pinched look on his face.“Exactly what kind of satisfaction were you looking to get tonight, Mr. Zimmermann?”---The rivalry between the men's hockey teams of Samwell and La Croix universities is long standing, thoroughly indoctrinated, and often bloody on and off the ice. With his future professional career at risk, La Croix captain Jack Zimmermann knows he needs to distance himself from the feud. Meeting Samwell's undervalued winger Eric Bittle while crashing a party, definitely isn't in his plans. Quicker than anticipated, though, it becomes clear that there's more than just hockey on the line - for both of them.[aCheck, Please!Romeo and Juliet AU]





	1. act i

**Author's Note:**

> Words by [@HeyFightMe](https://heyfightme.tumblr.com/tagged/my-fic), who has too many emotions about Shakespeare.
> 
> Art by [@Omgpieplease](https://omgpieplease.tumblr.com/tagged/my-art), who humors her, graciously.

The fist that collides with Jack’s face is wearing a ring.

 

He feels it slice across his cheekbone, scraping sting turning to the throb of heat, and launches himself bodily at the assailant in retaliation. He keeps himself low, grapples with punching their body, and is rewarded with the strained grunts of pain. They stumble back and he lets them go, straightening and pulling back to take another swing. His knuckles jar against the bone of the guy’s jaw. His head snaps back. Jack doesn’t wait before punching him again.

 

He can feel the jostle of the other guys around him, can hear Kent yelling as he fights his own fight, can smell the blood and kicked-up dust in the air.

 

Jack would be lying if he said he didn’t live for this, at least a little bit – the near-carnal thrill, the simple energy, the goal of something off the ice. The drive is the same, though: _beat them_.

 

He feels his target’s blunt nails scraping over the skin at the back of his neck, and responds by locking his arm around the guy’s throat and squeezing. He gets a fist to the chin for his troubles, the ring once again glancing off his skin. This time, though, Jack bites his tongue and tastes metal in his mouth. He shoves the guy away, watching as he’s sent sprawling in the dirt before bearing down on him with a kick to his body, Jack’s bright yellow running shoe reflecting even in the dim streetlamp light.

 

There’s a certain amount of satisfaction generated by the audible gasp forced out of the guy when Jack’s foot connects.

 

He’s winding up for another, even as the guy curls in on himself and makes a half-hearted snatch for Jack’s shoe, but then there’s a hand wrapped around his elbow and he’s getting pulled away.

“Fuck, Zimms, come _on_ – fuckin’ campus security is –”

Jack doesn’t let Kenny finish before he’s grabbing him in return and pulling him into a run, their steps thundering in tandem on the pavement even as hollering voices follow.

 

The fight recedes behind them as they burst from alleyway back out on to main street, still a little choked with people, probably from the game. It’s a weeknight, sure, but students do need late night coffees and midweek drinks. Jack slows to a swagger, pulling Kent under his arm roughly. He goes easily, laughing. Jack lets memory carry them toward the team hotel.

 

With a win under their belts, over Harvard no less, Coach Willard shouldn’t have anything to say about them breaking curfew. Still, Jack prefers to toe the line rather than step right over it. A bit of a tussle is one thing, but it’s nothing that’ll put them – or any of the Samwell players, for that matter – out of commission. As far as Willard is concerned, it may as well not have happened.

 

“You know what they say about thinking, Jack.”

Jack jostles him once more, squeezing slightly. Kent retaliates with an elbow.

“Fuck you, eh?” They walk in silence for a little longer, and Kent’s arm comes snaking around Jack’s waist. “I can’t believe Samwell followed us here.”

“It’s a rat move, for sure. Expect nothing less from those shitbags.”

“No, I mean like –” his arm is starting to feel stiff, so he pulls it from around Kent’s shoulders and shoves both hands in the pockets of his sweats. His knuckles are burning, just a bit. “I mean that it’s smart. They’re playing Harvard next week, and they’re playing us in November. They’re being strategic; checking how we match up. Looking for spots in our defense, logging our systems… it’s clever.”

Kent snorts, dismissive and sarcastic. “Or they could just watch tape. They didn’t come up here for that – they came to fuck with us. That’s it.”

“You know that’s not the same as seeing the whole ice. It’s what I’d do, if I had the time.”

“But you’re _you_.” The grin is back in Kent’s voice, even sounding toothed, and when Jack looks to him he finds he’s being watched with a raised eyebrow.

 

“You say that like I didn’t catch _you_ watching the Yale-UMich game under your covers at three a.m. the other night.”

“I needed something to put me to sleep.”

Kent nudges him again, darting away when Jack tries to nudge him back. The smile he throws this time is a challenge, so Jack pulls his hands from his pockets and tries again, but Kent’s too quick – he pulls away, and breaks into a run, yelling “more speed conditioning, Zimms,” over his shoulder. Jack chases him.

 

By the time they stumble through the doors of the hotel lobby, they’re gasping laughter.

“Zimmermann.”

Jack pulls up short, feeling his face freeze in its grin, Kent colliding with him one last time. They’re being surveyed by a frowning Coach Willard, still in uniform and with a clipboard folded in his arms. Jack feels the last vestiges of his smile slip from his face.

“The both of you – with me. Now.”

 

Willard’s room is on a different floor to the players’ rooms. He only turns on one lamp as he leads them inside, and Jack can’t help admiring the dramatics a little. Willard leans on the desk against the wall, gesturing to the arm chairs across from him. Jack resolutely avoids looking at Kent, but his air of nonchalance is almost palpable. Jack’s tempted to shove him.

“The rest of the team got back in ten minutes ago, and while they’re not in as much of a sorry state as you two –” Jack glances to his reflection in the mirror behind Willard, and notes that he’s dirty, and bloody, and his hair is a wild mess – “they were still pretty well beaten up. Pretty proud of themselves too, by the look of it. Are _you_ proud of yourselves?”

The question is addressed to both of them, but Willard fixes his eyes on Jack. Against his will, Jack finds himself hunching down. He swallows, and shakes his head. Next to him, Kent doesn’t say anything either.

 

“I just want you to put yourselves in my position for a moment. Just, humor me. Say you’ve got yourself the strongest team the NCAA has seen in decades, and say you’re pretty well on track to clinch a three-year Frozen Four victory streak. Say, for arguments’ sake, you’ve got a couple of forwards – your A and C, for example – who are attracting a lot of sniffing around from the NHL. Big teams, too. Lots of buzz. But then, it’s also a problem, because your A and C are a couple of _dumb fucking kids_ who think some stupid inter-team rivalry is more important than winning a god damn cup.”

“Coach –” Kent starts, but Willard jabs a finger at him.

“Unless the next words out of your mouth are  _you’re absolutely right and we’re sorrier than words can say_ , then I don’t want to hear it, Parson.”

 

The silence hangs. Jack hones in on the low hum of the minibar, the dull roar of distant traffic through Willard’s open window. He rubs his palms across the knees of his track pants.

 

“If it were just once, it’d be easy to say, ‘boys will be boys’ and sweep this whole thing under the rug.” Willard crosses his arms. His voice has taken on a weary taint, and as Jack looks at him, he starts to notice how tired his coach is looking. The deep set of his eyes. The droop of his mouth. Regret twinges sharply in Jack’s sternum. “Thing is, it’s not just once, is it? This is the third fight you’ve gotten into with Samwell this year.”

“I don’t think you can –” Kent starts again, and Jack is close to whacking him to get him to just shut the hell up.

“That’s three not counting the shit you pull on the ice, Parson. You want me to tally up your penalties against them?”

It sends Kent quiet, makes him fold his own arms and slump a little in his seat. Jack leans forward.

 

“Whatever you need to do. I – I’ll take it. Take the C, or bump me to a different line, just… Coach. Let me keep playing.” Jack hates that he hears the pleading in his own voice, hates that the undernotes of _it’s all I’ve got_ are ringing loud and clear. Kent hears it too, if his derisive snort is anything to go by. Willard just keeps frowning at him.

“I’m not going to pull you, Jack. No one’s hurt, from what I gather. And it’s not like you all started this – you’re just running through with what you’ve been handed. But you’ve got to understand… those other guys, those other years… they didn’t have the prospects that you have. They didn’t have eyes on ‘em.” Jack nods firmly, swallows harshly. He can feel a knot of something in his throat. “It’s not good for the program, and it’s not good for the school. If anything else happens, I’ll have to drop you. Whoever’s involved, he’s off the team.”

 

\---

 

“Oh my lord, what _happened_?”

The last thing Bitty would have expected to see on exiting the hostel lobby was a trudging pack of his teammates, bloodied and bruised, yet singing a cacophonous version of ‘Dancing Queen.’ Still, the evidence of his eyes puts it in front of him.

 

His presence registered, he’s immediately swept into a hollering huddle by a long reach, face colliding with a bare chest. He makes an ineffectual attempt to push himself away.

“Bitty, my man, I’m like supes glad you weren’t with us when the shit went down, but – fuck, it was beautiful.”

“What did y’all do?” Bitty manages to wrestle himself away from Shitty’s fierce grip, stepping back to better survey the group. There is dirt clinging to all of them, and clear grass stains on Ransom’s jeans. Holster’s glasses are cracked. Chowder has a split lip. “You look like you were attacked.”

“You should see the other guys.” Bitty blinks at Dex, whose expression is impassive and doesn’t betray a hint of irony in the statement. He frowns.

 

Holster steps closer and slings an arm over Shitty’s shoulders, giving Bitty a clearer impression of the promise of a bruise where his glasses have clearly jammed into his cheek. “Those La Croix jackoffs were prowling around looking to start shit. So, we started shit.”

“And ended it.” Chowder and Nursey share a high-five.

“Can you _hear_ yourselves?” Bitty knows he sounds borderline hysterical, definitely judgmental, wholly incredulous. “You sound like a buncha – a pack of animals.”

“Bits, no one got hurt. Not really.” Ransom’s clearly trying to soothe him, but it just sounds condescending.

“Maybe not physically. But do you ever – god, boys, do you even think? We’re not even supposed to be up here. If it got back to Hall and Murray that we went to their game and then started a – a _fray_ in the streets of Cambridge, we may as well not call ourselves a hockey team anymore.”

“Brah, hockey’s basically married to starting fights.”

“ _On the ice, Shitty!_ ” It bursts out of him and slaps the grins from all their faces. He hears Nursey whisper “holy shit,” but chooses to ignore him. “Not in the streets! And – _and_ , Shitty Knight, this is the NCAA and fighting is cause for disqualification, so hush yourself with this ‘hockey is violent’ bullshit.”

 

Bitty can feel the heat in his own face, the pressure of his rage building in his cheeks and – embarrassingly – in his eyes. He blinks furiously in an attempt to will away the tears, folding his arms, rough and impatient. Thankfully, his scowl keeps the tears at bay.

“Bits, you’re alright. It’s _alright_ ,” Shitty says again, when Bitty opens his mouth to retort. “You going out somewhere? I’ll come with you, huh?”

His tone is open and easy, and Bitty is already starting to feel badly for having snapped at him, so he sighs and nods through a roll of eyes.

 

He ignores the backwards glances they get as the others filter through the hostel doors, especially the deep-set frown that Ransom throws over his shoulder that – Bitty knows – promises a whispered heart-to-heart in the early hours of the morning.

“C’mon, where you headed?” Shitty nudges him with an elbow as he goes about buttoning up his shirt. Bitty wrenches his attention from their retreating friends back to the street. It’s not overly late, not yet, but a weekday, so despite their proximity to Chinatown and Emerson and a few nightclubs, there aren’t many people about.

“I just want some chicken,” he tells Shitty, a little miserably, and gets an understanding nod in reply.

 

\---

 

Spencer snores. It usually makes him a shit roommate, but tonight Jack’s grateful, in a way. It gives him something outside his own head to focus on.

 

He’d showered, quickly, a little surprised at how dirty the water was after coming into contact with his body. It wasn’t just dust, either. He wasn’t sure all the blood was his own.

 

His hands feel tenderized, and his face is stinging and throbbing where those ringed punches landed, but it seems like small potatoes compared to other things. Other things, for example, like the weight that began building in his gut when Willard started talking, and hasn’t shifted since. Even as he lies, now, staring at the ceiling listening to Spencer’s labored sleep-breaths – he isn’t sure he could move from the bed, even if he wanted to.

 

There’s a knock at the door. It’s soft, and comes in between Spencer’s gasp and rattle. Jack could ignore it, and pretend to be asleep, and just speak to whoever it is in the morning.

 

There’s another knock at the door. Another knock, and his phone pings where he’d dropped it on the bedside table.

 

KP (23:42)  
come out

 

Jack’s tempted to ignore it, when a second message swoops through.

 

KP (23:42)  
haha double entendre

 

He wrestles out of the starchy hotel bedsheets and barely spares a glance to Spencer as he pads to the door and lets himself into the hallway. The guttural breath that Spencer takes just as the door closes is probably the best indication that he’s not waking any time soon.

 

Kent stands against the wall across from Jack’s door, phone held aloft with a loose wrist out from the nonchalant cross of his arms across his bare chest. In nothing but a beanie and a pair of boxers patterned over with Hawaiian-shirt-wearing panthers, he’s presenting too many visual contradictions for Jack to make sense of. Double entendre, sure.

“What do you want?”

“I want to know what the hell, man.” Kent’s voice is a drawl, made easy and low for the time of night. There’s a smirk in his words, sure, but he wouldn’t be at Jack’s door if he wasn’t actually checking in with Jack – if he wasn’t, in his way, concerned. Jack sighs, and mirrors Kent’s position against the door.

 

“Aren’t you over it, by now?”

 

Kent’s face is blank. He rolls his wrist, phone dark in his hand, before tucking it into the fold of his arms: their cross, now, is deliberate. He looks defensive.

“Doesn’t take long for you to change your tune. It’s been, like, five hours.”

Jack can’t look at him. He tips his head back against the door, wrapping his arms tighter across his chest. When he swallows, it feels sticky. Viscous. When he speaks, his voice comes out at a rasp.

“I felt like I was going to throw up, back there with Willard. Shit, Kenny, we almost lost it all. We’ve been – fuck, we’ve been riding this line for four years. For what? I can’t do this anymore. I can’t let some rivalry stop – I mean, the injuries are one thing.” He rolls his gaze back down to meet Kent’s eyes, still impassive and almost mirrored. Kent has a bruise seeping through on his cheekbone, and a cut across the bridge of his nose. “The broken hands, and – and the bruises, and teeth, whatever. It’s nothing we wouldn’t get in a game. But, Willard’s right – right? It looks bad. It – it’s more than just fighting, Kenny. You know it is.”

 

Kent’s expression hasn’t shifted. It doesn’t shift, not even when he pushes off the wall and treads two steps towards Jack.

“No, it’s not. It’s fighting. That’s it. It’s fighting, and winning, and fucking… fucking team building, and morale, and whatever the fuck else. We all get something out of it. Don’t pretend you don’t, Zimms.”

He’s less than a foot away now, and reaches out to clap a hand on Jack’s shoulder – the hand holding his phone. It digs into the skin at the junction of Jack’s neck, just a little.

 

“It’s only a matter of time,” Jack mutters at him. “Something’s got to give, eh? You don’t feel that?”

“You’re such a fucking drama queen,” Kent mutters back.

 

When Jack goes back into the room, Spencer is still snoring, and the weight is still sitting, low and unavoidable, in his stomach. He lies on top of the rough sheets, clammy all over.

 

He doesn’t sleep.

 

\---

 

He didn’t grow up in the Downtown, but Shitty knows his way around enough. Bitty is content to trail after him, eyes on the pavement. Treading closer to the Common, there are more people about: tourists, making the most of their hours in a strange city. It’s after a wailing child passes in the arms of her father, shushing and cooing and saying _I know, we’ll be back at the hotel in a minute_ , that Shitty nudges him again.

“So, you freaked out back there.”

Bitty makes an indignant noise, nasal and too whiny for his own liking, but doesn’t try to vocalize his protest. Shitty takes his meaning regardless.

“Well, I mean. You nearly shit a brick.”

 

Bitty sighs. He’s not exactly _wrong_ , is the problem.

“I just wish y’all wouldn’t run around starting fights with La Croix, especially when Hall and Murray specifically told us it wasn’t a good idea to come up here and crash their game.” Their coaches maybe hadn’t said it in so many words, but to Bitty, _wait until you can meet them on our own turf_ wasn’t exactly up for interpretation. There were other things they’d said, things they’d said just to Bitty, that were even less ambiguous.

“Yeah man, but they’re not going to find out. Who’s going to tell them; those Cross dickheads? They’d be in just as much fuckin’ trouble from their own coaches, so. And besides – you weren’t even there, Bits. We’d make sure they knew you weren’t there.”

Bitty deliberately scuffs his foot across the pavement. “It’s _different_.”

“How is it different?”

 

Bitty huffs a breath through his nose, clicks his tongue, and keeps dragging his feet. He can’t look up at Shitty, can’t quite bring himself to acknowledge the bare concern that is probably there when he’s still feeling resentful.

“ _Bits_ ,” Shitty insists, clapping a hand on his shoulder and pulling him to a stop. Bitty roughly shrugs his hand off, but deigns to look up through an eye-roll. He knows he’s being petulant, but petulance seems preferable to breaking down. Meeting his gaze is a mistake, though: Shitty’s expression is earnest, and palpably worried, and only makes Bitty’s stomach curl up with guilt.

 

“I can’t give them a reason to kick me off the team, Shitty. They’re so close already.” He tries to keep his voice steady as he says it, but despite his efforts it trails off into a wobble. Going to the La Croix v. Harvard game had been fun, but on deciding to go back to the hostel and bundle up a bit more, Bitty’s alone-time thoughts had taken over. The game had really only been a reminder of what he’d miss when – no, _if_ (he was trying to be positive) – he was cut from the Samwell team. He’d sat on his bunk in the hostel dorm and rolled between crying and scrunching his sheets in angry fists. The chicken was intended to be comfort food more than sustenance.

 

Shitty’s eyes widen, and a smile starts to eke its way onto his face, a dismissive comment clearly bubbling beneath his moustache, so Bitty cuts him off.

“You’re gonna say I’m overreacting, but I’m serious. They told me. They said I need to start improving or they’ll drop me from the team. And it’s not just the checking, _Shitty_ –” he lays a hand on Shitty’s chest, pushing back on the protests he knows are forthcoming – “with my grades, and my attendance, and the last time y’all got into it with La Croix –” the way Holster tells it, they had, for lack of a better phrase, been defending Bitty’s honor – “I’m startin’ to be more trouble than I’m worth.” He swallows, and it feels hard in his throat. Shitty, at least, doesn’t try to interject again. His mouth is pressed in a thin line, brows drawn high on his forehead. Bitty pats him on the chest. A small thing in the back of his mind pipes up that it always seems to be that he’s the one doing the caring, rarely being cared for. He bites it back, teeth digging hard into his bottom lip.

 

“I just wish you wouldn’t start nothin’ while I’m sitting on such… well, such thin ice.”

Shitty’s face falls into a smirk, and he pulls Bitty into a bony headlock which Bitty allows for all of five seconds before shoving him away.

“I want chicken,” he reminds Shitty, who replies by way of finger guns and striding off down the street again.

 

Showing almost uncharacteristic restraint, he doesn’t mention it again until Bitty’s sitting across from him in some kind of hipster Boston late-night diner, a surprisingly passable tray of chicken and biscuits in front of him, Shitty picking at the bowl of cookout slaw it came with. It’s possible he waits purposefully until Bitty’s chewing on a mouthful of chicken and holding greasy fingers gingerly over the tray, and therefore can’t make an immediate reply.

“I might need to mention something to the boys. About, like, toning it down.”

Bitty makes a muffled sound which is supposed to sound like _don’t you dare_. Shitty just nods gravely.

“I know, but Halloween’s in like two weeks and we’ve got that kegster planned. That’s supposed to be ‘three editions of the Swallow’ off the charts. Four, if we’re lucky.”

Bitty swallows, frowning, but forgoes making a reply for taking an angry mouthful of fries. He may as well see where Shitty is headed with this. At least he has comfort food already at the go.

 

“Look, I won’t tell them the whole deal. I’ll just, like, say to Rans that Murray and Hall mentioned something to me about pulling our heads in, and so we need to keep this one relatively… chill, or whatever.”

It shouldn’t be able to be traced back to Bitty, really. His friends shouldn’t have to know that _he’s_ the real chicken – that he’s the fun police keeping them from enjoying their college years to the full extent. Jerkily, he manages a nod.

Shitty grins. “S’wawesome.” He punctuates it with a huge mouthful of slaw, and Bitty wrinkles his nose through a smile.

 

\---

 

The bus back to campus the morning after the game is tense, at the very least.

 

Jack tries not to ruminate on the potential pettiness of ignoring the spare seat next to Kent and bee-lining to the very back row. Despite Jack’s headphones and book and highlighter, though, Kent still plonks himself into the aisle seat about an hour out of Boston.

 

Jack pulls one earbud free with a barely-held sigh.

“Take a hint, maybe?”

“What, and let you sulk back here like a little girl?”

Jack lets the sigh out. “Parse, I just want to read my book.” He may as well not have said anything at all.

“Listen: Dougie has it that Samwell are doing a Halloween party.”

Jack stares at him. “What part of that ass-chewing did you miss last night? The bit where Willard said the entire reputation of the team is riding on us, or the part where he said we’d be fucking kicked out if we did anything with Samwell? I told you, I don’t want to do any of it anymore.”

“Willard wouldn’t find out. _Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell_ , Zimms. All we’d be doing – _listen_ ,” he cuts himself off, pre-empting Jack’s interruption and pressing a spread hand into his chest. “All we’d be doing,” he repeats, emphatic, “is going to a party. And hey, if things get a little out of hand and they get heat from their administration, it’s only levelling the playing field.”

Jack exhales sharply through his nose, already shaking his head, the ringing in his head of the words _risk_ and _future_ bringing something sour to the back of his throat. Kent leans in a little closer, rests his touch on Jack’s chest a little heavier.

“Nothing is going to happen,” he says, slow and deliberate. Jack’s eyes find his, grey and flat with the overcast sky coming through the window. “They have nothing to lose, you know that – neither do we. They’re not going to take this from us. You’ll see. Just, come to the party – you’ll see.”

 

Jack has to blink away, focusing instead on the trees passing them by. Even they look grey. They shouldn’t be; it’s October.

“I don’t know if I can afford to think that way, Kenny. You know it’s not – you know I’ve got more than you, I’ve got my dad, my fucking uncles, I’ve got all these –”

“Right.” It’s sharp, and snide, and punctuated by Kent withdrawing his hand from Jack’s chest. Jack turns back to him.

“I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant – they’re always watching me. You know they’re always watching me.”

“And you’re scared they’re going to finally see the actual gamble they’re taking. Do you ever wonder,” he leans in close, and lowers his voice a bit, and Jack finds himself hunching lower in his seat as well, “where the line will be? What will finally get them seeing, huh? Do you seriously think one fucking party – after everything else you’ve done, _one fucking party_ – is going to be the thing that makes them finally give up on you?”

 

Jack isn’t sure he can say anything meaningful. He grasps at Kent’s arm, just shy of digging his fingers in, and manages a mumbled-yet-edged, “ _Kenny_.” Jack’s starting to get a better handle on that feeling, the one in his stomach – the one making the back of his neck feel cold, and his mouth dry. It’s the same thing he felt, constant, through every game he played when he was seventeen. There aren’t words for it, though. No words, at least, that will make Kent understand. It’s not just a party. That, Jack is sure of.

 

Kent seems to hear him, though he says nothing.

“There’s no point guessing about things. You’re lying to yourself about not being in control. Come to the party.”

 

\---

 

Jack goes to the party.

 

He allows Kent to coerce him into a makeshift costume – an old Blackhawks jersey and a shitty plastic goalie mask apparently turn him into a road hockey kid. From the way Kent keeps weakly giggling into his shoulder and slurring “ _game on_ ,” Jack guesses it’s a reference to something else as well. Still, with the tab that Kent slips him, and the solo cup that gets pressed into his hand within minutes of entering the house, Jack can’t be bothered sparing it further thoughts.

 

The music is a deep throb, heavy beats that Jack feels in his gut. He’s hot, in his face and his chest, but he lets himself be pulled into the swell of bodies closest to the speakers. Kent is pressed against him, and Jack presses back, and it is _heat_. No one’s dancing properly, not really, just moving, and Jack touches and gets touched and the music isn’t music any more, it’s just a rhythm in his stomach, and when someone runs their hand down his arm every nerve sparks in the wake of their touch.

 

The bodies around him are rolling, and the music in his own body is rolling, and Jack is _rolling_.

 

He doesn’t have a drink any more, and his mask is long gone, but he does have his hands in the air, and his face is turned up to the ceiling when someone throws a cup of water over everyone’s heads and that’s nice. It’s cool. Jack closes his eyes, and licks his lips, and when he looks over the heads of the people around him, he makes eye contact with a guy.

 

The guy looks familiar. Tall. Blond hair, glasses. He’s frowning at Jack, so Jack frowns back. He sees the guy mouth something that could be _what the fuck_. It might be funny that that’s what makes it hit home for Jack – should be funny, probably, that this guy is unrecognizable unless he’s throwing rage in Jack’s direction – but a second after Jack realizes it’s Birkholtz, Samwell’s number four and Alternate Captain, he’s fighting his way through the crowd to probably recreate their last off-ice meeting.

 

Self-preservation is stronger than molly, apparently.

 

Jack’s moving in the opposite direction before he can really think about it, forcing the crowd apart and using all his strength and acuity to get out of the room and back out into the hall. The party is sparser there, more people leaning against walls and flirting than grinding on each other. The drug-deadened edge of Jack’s panic keeps him moving, throwing looks over his shoulder at the entryway to the room he just left.

 

The sight of Birkholtz’s giant blond head bobbing above the crowd, eyes sharp and brow drawn with all the prey-seeking keenness of an eagle, sends Jack ducking through this first doorway he comes across. The door swings shut behind him, a soft close, marginally muffling the throb of the party in the rest of the house. He backs from it a few steps, already clenching his fists to ready for a swing. Birkholtz doesn’t follow.

 

The huff of relief that Jack lets out is answered by an indignant, “Hel- _lo_.”

 

Jack whirls around.

 

The room is more occupied than he thought it was, in that not only is it home to large counters covered in utensils and food, but there is a person in it – a guy, standing hands-on-hips in a rabbit costume, an ear flopping over one eye.

“Uh, hi. Hello. Sorry.” Jack glances back to the door. It doesn’t seem inclined to opening and putting him within reach of Birkholtz’s fists. Jack feels secure in directing full attention to the rabbit guy. “You’re a rabbit,” Jack informs him.

He gets a distinct eye-roll in reply, the rabbit shifting his stance to cross his arms over his chest. He also juts out a hip, drawing Jack’s gaze downward to the pull of shorts across the rabbit’s thighs.

“And you’re trespassing.” Jack looks back to his face, blinking. It seems left of field, until Jack’s memory catches up to him and he realizes it was probably a response to something Jack said. He starts to make an apology – with the folded arms and general frown, the rabbit seems unhappy with Jack’s presence – but he’s interrupted. “But it’s probably expected of a Blackhawks fan.”

 

Jack frowns. “I’m not a Blackhawks fan.”

“Evidence to the contrary.” The rabbit directs a pointed look at Jack’s chest, and Jack swears he can taste the lack of admiration. His mouth seems to think that’s something worth smiling at.

“It, uh, it’s not mine. Halloween party, you know.”

“And you thought you’d come as a racist?”

 

Jack’s mouth seems to think that’s something worth laughing at.

“I can take it off, if you’d prefer.”

His mouth has definitely gained a mind of its own. However, with the way a ruddy tint introduces itself to the rabbit’s cheeks, and the way his eyebrows raise and a smile flits its way across his lips, Jack is actually grateful for his personal lack of restraint.

“You think you’re cute, huh?” the rabbit asks him.

“I think I’m high,” Jack confesses.

 

That gets him a real laugh, a pealing noise that sounds somehow both dry and bright and that Jack wants to hear more of.

“You don’t _say_. Let’s get some water in you, big guy.”

The rabbit turns to a cupboard, and with the way he reaches up and the fabric of his shorts rides up at the back, the fluffy tail fixed to them drawing Jack’s eyes down again, Jack can’t quite stop himself from drawing closer and leaning against the bench behind him.

 

Having taken out and filled a glass of water, the rabbit passes it to Jack with a vaguely mocking, “drink up, alright?”

 

Jack obliges, downing it all in a few gulps. He smacks his lips, ruminating on the cool residue of the water around his mouth, before saying, “I’m Jack.”

The rabbit smiles again. “Nice to meet you, Jack. I’m Eric.”

“Eric,” Jack repeats. Done with his glass, he turns to set it on the bench amongst the mess already there. It’s not the kind of clutter Jack’s used to from house parties – less empty cans and pizza boxes, more measuring cups and smattering of flour. “You’re cooking something?”

Eric nods in reply, gesturing towards the oven. “Just a _little_ something.”

“You do that regularly? Go to house parties and invade their kitchens?”

Eric laughs again, nose wrinkling a little this time. Jack is filled with the overwhelming urge to smooth his forefinger down Eric’s nose – an urge which, thankfully, he somehow manages to overpower.

“This is my kitchen. I live here.”

Jack stares at him. He definitely doesn’t want to touch Eric’s nose any more. This party, this house – they both belong to the Samwell hockey team. If Eric lives in the house, it means –

“You’re on the Samwell hockey team.”

Eric nods, still smiling. “That’s right.”

 

Jack folds his arms, looking over Eric’s body. He’s small, that’s doubtless, and Jack isn’t sure he’s ever actually faced off against him. Probably doesn’t get a lot of ice time. He filters through Samwell’s roster, searching in his knowledge for who he’s possibly stumbled upon. Given Eric’s size, his probable underclassman status, and the fact Jack didn’t recognize his face by sight…

“You’re Bittle. Number fifteen.”

Eric’s – _Bittle’s_ smile flits away, his brow dropping into a frown. He shifts his weight a little, leaning away from Jack minutely, but enough that it’s detectable.

 

Jack knows Bittle. He has watched a possibly excessive amount of tape to that end. He knows that, if Samwell could sort out one thing about Bittle’s play – just one thing – he’d be a real threat on the ice. Bittle’s speed is, by Jack’s assessment, unmatched in the NCAA. He’s also amazingly deft with his stick, with some truly soft hands that give him an incredible potential to really move the puck. He’d be on Samwell’s first line, easy, if they could figure out how to properly utilize his talents and work around the only major deficit has as a player.

 

Jack has spent hours, probably, watching Bittle glide across the ice on tape. He knows his play inside and out, knows exactly what he personally needs to do should he ever come up against Bittle on the ice, and knows even what could be done to get around Bittle’s apparent aversion to checking.

 

He could say any of these things. He could praise Bittle’s speed, or his hands, anything positive to get that gentle and thoughtless smile back on his face. It’s almost like a reflex, though, one he hasn’t yet had time to fully work around. The fact is, Bittle plays for Samwell, and Jack knows how to have exactly one type of interaction with a Samwell player, which is probably why what he actually ends up saying is:

“You’re the one with the fainting goat routine.”

 

Bittle doesn’t say anything, just looks away from Jack. He blinks rapidly, jaw tense, and even though Jack can more than recognize his upset, he also can’t find what little restraint he may have gained back from the water. He powers through, echoes of conversations with his own teammates falling from his mouth, almost a conditioned reaction.

“You know, I was _surprised_ when I first saw your stats on the roster, but after seeing that shit you guys pulled in your first game last year… I’m not any more. Typical fucking Samwell hockey.”

Something in Bittle’s neck jumps, but Jack can’t stop now that he’s started.

“How many times have you been boxed for diving? I saw you take out that forward a couple games back. What about tripping? I expected this kind of showboat-y shit from Birkholtz and Oluransi, really, but the fact they got Hall and Murray on side is surprising. I guess it just goes to show that the entire organization’s in on it.”

 

“Actually, they’re _not_ ‘in on it’ and I’m about to be cut. Satisfied?” Bittle snaps it, aggressive and sharp, and though he still doesn’t turn to look at Jack, it still feels like a slap in the face.

“Oh.”

 

It’s not silent, couldn’t be with the oven and the party and the music still blasting out from the room down the hall, but Jack almost wishes it were. Bittle rubs the heel of his hand over his eyes.

“So much for benefit of the doubt,” he mutters, probably to himself. It sounds wobbly, and angry, and so Jack drops his arms out of their fold and reaches out.

 

His hand is stopped by Bittle’s hard gaze. Jack lets the hand fall.

 

“Sorry.”

Bittle blinks at him.

“I shouldn’t have. Euh… yeah. Sorry.”

Bittle laughs again, sharp and forced, more bark than bells this time. Jack swallows.

 

“I knew it was you. You’re Jack Zimmermann. You’re the Captain at La Croix. But, you know, I thought – he’s maybe flirting, and he’s kind of awkward, so surely he’s not as much of an asshole as Ransom and Holster always say he is.”

“I was flirting.” It sounds desperate, even to Jack. Bittle seems to agree, if his arched eyebrow is any indication.

“Not even you would be arrogant enough to think that insulting my team and my hockey abilities and my _friends_ would be a good way to get me in to bed. What do fuckboys like you call it? Negging?”

Jack can’t find any words for that. He keeps watching Bittle, watching Bittle watching him, and isn’t even aware he’s doing anything until Bittle groans and looks away.

“Stop that.”

“Stop what?”

“With the – with the _eyes_ and the _mouth_ , good lord. No wonder all a y’all get away with murder; butter wouldn’t melt, I swear.”

 

Jack takes it as an invitation of sorts. He leans away from the bench and steps closer to Bittle, not quite encroaching on his space, but hopefully conveying the earnestness he feels.

“I really am sorry. I need to… I’m fucked up, right now. It’s not a reason. I shouldn’t have said all that shit, but I think it’s just, like… it’s stupid, eh? It’s fucking childish. All this rivalry bullshit.” He’s murmuring by the end, hands shoved in his pockets, not able to look Bittle in the face any more. He can feel heat in his own face again, different from before; now it feels like pressure, the inside pushing out. “I haven’t really said that out loud before.”

Bittle hums, and when Jack looks up he finds he’s being watched again. “You’re serious?”

“For a while it was good team building, something to bring all the guys together and to smooth over anything that wasn’t working internally – focus your animosity outward, eh? – but now it’s like… I’m graduating this year, and I’ve got more shit to sort out than just, like, trying to take down your team because we can.” It’s the most Jack’s said on the topic of the enmity, maybe ever. It’s certainly the most he’s questioned it outside of his own head. Logic tells him it’s the tab he took, and the liquor he drank, but evidence tells him it’s Bittle’s eyes – Bittle’s huge, deeply brown eyes, lashes thick and blond and catching even the light from the dull bulb in the ceiling – that are loosening his tongue.

 

“I get so worried,” Bittle starts, murmuring low and a little gruff, and Jack watches the shapes his lips make, “that the boys are going to get in so much trouble one day that – that they’ll be pulled from the team, and then it’ll be obvious how far behind I am, because I’ll have no one helping me anymore. And then I’ll get pulled as well. And I won’t even have hockey.”

Jack hears himself make a noise, something that comes from his throat and rings of distress, because that – that’s what he’s scared of too. Not having hockey doesn’t seem like enough of a deterrent for anyone else. It doesn’t even seem to be enough to stop Kent from starting shit, despite the fact that Jack _knows_ Kent loves it.

“Me too,” he tells Bittle. “I feel like – I feel like I don’t think of anything else. I’m just… I’ve nearly lost it already, once. I can’t let that happen again.”

 

This time it’s Bittle who makes the aborted movement, who reaches out and stops himself, hand suspended in the air between them. Jack thinks he might be holding his breath as he looks at Bittle’s hand, inches from the fabric of the Blackhawks jersey. He lets the breath loose, and steps into Bittle’s touch.

 

Bittle’s fingers tangle in the material almost immediately, the fist he makes nudging into Jack’s sternum.

 

It should be a moment, Jack thinks, that leads to kissing. He wants to. He wants to make Bittle’s ginormous eyes flutter closed. He wants to pull the hood with the ears away from Bittle’s head, and twist his own fingers into Bittle’s hair. He wants to feel the sway of Bittle’s back beneath his hand. It’s a party, and Jack wants to touch another person, and Bittle looks made to be touched. It _should_ be that moment, if not for the way a booming voice yelling “ _Bitty!_ ” rings through the closed door and makes Bittle gasp.

“Get down,” he hisses, and yanks at where he’s holding Jack’s shirt until Jack is nearly choking and is forced into a crouch on the kitchen floor. He barely has himself righted into a sustainable squat before the kitchen door swings open and the noise of the party is amplified.

“Bitty!” the voice calls again, and Jack tenses in his position on the floor. It’s definitely one of Bittle’s teammates, probably the mouthy winger with the moustache – number forty-two. Knight.

“Shitty Knight, you know there is no yollerin’ in my kitchen.”

“Fuck that – there are La Croix insurgents in the house, and we need everyone we can get to help smoke the fuckers out.”

“Oh?” Even to Jack, Bittle’s hesitation is clear. Jack’s still pinging, can still feel every nerve ending across his skin, and wants to feel Bittle’s too. He lifts a hand to wrap around Bittle’s calf, unseen, thumb rubbing a solitary circle into the skin above his tube sock that is intended to be soothing. All it does, though, is make Bittle jump a little and grip the kitchen bench with both hands. When he speaks again, it’s deliberate and slow. “I haven’t seen any of them.”

 

“I know you haven’t, holy shit – what would they be doing in the kitchen? C’mon; we need you to go upstairs and check all the bedrooms while we sweep down here. Holster swears he saw Zimmermann go into the yard, but he probably snuck back in somehow.”

Jack digs his fingers into Bittle’s leg, almost unintentionally. For his troubles, one of Bittle’s hands falls from the bench and lays itself on top of Jack’s head, light and a little hesitant. Jack finds himself craning into the touch, searching for more pressure, maybe even Bittle’s fingers threading into his hair. He’s not disappointed, though the touch is still tentative.

“Why can’t you just let them alone, Shitty? Have they even done anything?”

 

Bittle’s leg, beneath Jack’s hand, is sparsely covered in light and downy hair that Jack can make catch the light if he rubs Bittle’s thigh just so. If he spreads his hand across the expanse of skin, thumb grazing at the hem of Bittle’s shorts, he can feel Bittle’s muscle tensing. He feels strong. Jack presses his fingers down, harder.

 

Thoroughly occupied with Bittle’s thigh, Jack has faded out the conversation happening above the bench. He’s even sort of forgotten that there is someone else in the room, and is close to nuzzling his face against the gold of Bittle’s skin. Actually, he doesn’t see why he’s _not_ doing that. He leans in, breathing deeply as he lays a first hot, harsh kiss on Bittle’s leg, just below the hem of his shorts. Bittle’s hand tightens on his hair, but doesn’t pull him away, so Jack uses his nose to push the shorts higher. They’re ridiculously short, really – even that small movement gives Jack access to where Bittle’s skin starts to get tender and soft. He scrapes his teeth there, and tries to bite down, and above him he hears Bittle tersely say, “go, I’ll be out in a minute.”

“You can clean up this shit later, just come and –”

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t just call my baking _shit_.” Bittle says this as he’s applying slight pressure to Jack’s head, enough that Jack takes a hint and brings up both his hands to grip into the backs of Bittle’s thighs. The muscles quiver, and Jack digs his nails in and, with his mouth, follows the logical line to the hardness in the front of Bittle’s shorts.

 

“Just – Shitty, just give me a minute! Please!” Bittle’s voice has gone slightly high, a margin sharp and hysterical, as his hips twitch forward and he meets the open kisses Jack is mouthing over the front of his costume with answering rubs of his own. His hold in Jack’s hair is tight, and desperate, and even as his voice pleads with his friend to leave the room, his body seems to be pleading with Jack to stay.

 

Above the counter, there’s a defensive “fucking hell, Bits!” followed by an unmistakably slammed door. Bittle makes a loud and helpless noise, like a falling sigh, and Jack inhales the scent of him. He’s inching his fingers higher towards Bittle’s ass, and nuzzling harder against Bittle’s cock, when suddenly his head is pulled back and Bittle’s flushed face is in his field of vision. He’s dropped into a crouch, holding Jack by the wrist and observing him with wide eyes.

“You’re a menace,” he admonishes.

Jack finds himself leaning forward a little. Bittle has freckles, across his nose and cheeks – the ghosts of freckles, faded through the Fall. Jack wants to see them in the summertime. He blinks, and it feels lazy and labored.

“I’m still high,” he informs Bittle. It’s an apology, maybe.

Bittle’s eyes widen a little, and a small line appears between his brows that Jack wants to smooth over with his forefinger.

“Oh,” Bittle says, low and detectably thoughtful. He bites down on his lip momentarily, and if Jack’s mouth weren’t already dry he’s sure it would be, just from the way Bittle’s lip comes away pinked and slightly spit-shiny. There’s something wistful about it, though, something that seems reflective and longing. It’s sad, almost. Sad and enthralling.

“You’re so beautiful,” Jack tells him, as factually as he can. “I can’t remember ever seeing someone so beautiful.”

Those lips, still pink and lush, press together in a hard line, briefly. The line between Bittle’s brows deepens. “You’re still high,” Bittle parrots to him.

 

It’s true, technically, but it doesn’t sound right. Jack doesn’t know what him being high has to do with Bittle being beautiful: the concepts exist independently of each other. Before he can say anything to that effect, though, Bittle has gripped him by the upper arm and is working on hauling him to his feet.

“C’mon, big boy. You’ve gotta help me out here; weight lifting isn’t my strong suit.”

Jack reaches for the bench and pulls himself up. He makes a grope for Bittle’s waist, but his hand gets gently deflected. Bittle steps away momentarily, and crosses to the still-humming yet thoroughly-forgotten oven, turning the dials and snatching a dishrag off the counter as he opens the door. He bends to remove a tray of something that looks rich, and chocolatey – brownies, maybe. He deposits it on a waiting wire rack, sighing sharply.

“A little underdone’ll have to do, I guess.” He drops the rag back to the bench, and turns again to Jack. “I said to Shitty I’d guard the upstairs, so on my way there I’ll distract Ransom on the door, and you can slip out into the night with that jawline of yours still intact. Hopefully your friends won’t have gone all too far.”

 

Jack trails after him toward the kitchen door, pulling up short with what may as well be a hair’s breadth of distance between them. Bittle cracks the door and leans out into the hall for a moment before whirling back in and near colliding with Jack’s chest.

“Right, so, Ransom’s on the door. I’m going to say I thought I saw someone go upstairs, and convince him to come up with me. And then – then you can leave.”

Jack nods. “Thank you.” He means it, but it doesn’t seem like enough. Bittle’s cheeks are colored again, looking warm and sweet, so Jack ducks down and presses his lips to one. “You’re incredible.”

 

Bittle blinks up at him, and drags his teeth across his lip in that same sad way, and then the door is swinging closed behind him.

 

Jack waits, only his own slow breaths for company, holding moments until he edges out the kitchen door and into the hall. It’s still flowing with bodies, still heaving with music, and Jack just lets himself be pulled with the current to the exit. Hand on the doorknob, he turns a final time, looking up the stairs to where Bittle said he had gone.

 

He’s there. He’s there, and looking past his friend straight at Jack, hood finally tugged from his head. He’s shining, Jack thinks.

 

Jack touches his fingertips to his own lips, just once, and lifts his hand in a wave. He doesn’t wait to see Bittle’s reaction before pushing out onto the porch.

 

\---

 

Bitty gasps. It’s audible to himself, and it’s audible to Ransom, standing only a few steps below him on the staircase. With his stare clearly fixed over Ransom’s shoulder an at the entryway to the Haus, it makes sense that Ransom jerks around to see what he’s looking at, demanding “huh?” as he does it.

“No, nothing. It was nothing. I thought I saw – uh, I thought it was that swimmer guy that Holster kept trying to get me with. But it wasn’t!” He titters a laugh that sounds fake to his own ears, but apparently passes muster for Ransom, who turns back to him with a salacious grin on his face.

“Thirsty much, Bitty?”

Bitty’s proud that his answering snort sounds passably dismissive. “If you mean thirsty for Holster to leave me alone and let me pick my own dates, then sure.”

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

“Youthinks? Watch who you’re calling a lady, Justin Oluransi.”

“It’s a quote, Bits, it’s from –”

“I _know_ what it is.” It comes out harsh, and sharp, and makes Ransom raise his eyebrow with an air of consternation. Bitty sighs. “I’m tired. I should maybe just go to bed.”

 

Ransom appraises him with raised brows and a general expression that looks slightly as though he’s sucking on a hard candy. It somehow makes his cheekbones even more prominent. After searching Bitty’s face for something unknown to Bitty himself, Ransom claps a hand on Bitty’s arm and throws a look over his own shoulder.

“We’ll wind it up down here, man. Give it a few, and you’ll be able to sleep easy.”

Bitty tries to arrange his face into a smile that communicates some form of gratitude. “Thanks, Ransom. I really appreciate it.”

 

Ducking away from Ransom’s hand and then under the police tape at the top of the stairs, Bitty as good as holds his breath until he’s behind his bedroom door.

 

It comes out of him in a gust that borders on a sob.

 

He’d left his closet door open, and the full-length mirror hung inside it reflects a sorry sight back to him: a pathetic and desperate idiot in an overly-revealing puck bunny costume, red in the face as though literally stung by shame.

 

He kicks off his shoes forcefully, grimacing with marginal satisfaction when they _thunk_ against the opposite wall, one landing on his desk and the other tumbling to the floor. He slams his closet door as well, for good measure.

 

Wrestling out of his costume isn’t nearly as satisfying, it being clearly orchestrated to be stripped with relative ease. When it hits the floorboards, he scoops it up and throws it into his wastebasket.

 

As Bitty tugs on sleep pants and a hoodie, both thin and soft with wear, he listens to the echoes of the boys downstairs, ushering bodies both drunken and otherwise out of the Haus. It’s only when he’s settled bent-kneed on his bed, Señor Bun hugged to his chest, that he lets loose another sob. He shakes himself immediately after.

 

“Get it together, Bittle.”


	2. act ii

Jack runs, for at least two blocks. He’s going against the flow of most other party-leavers, but there must be something about the look on his face that sends most of the revelers careening out of his way. He knocks shoulders with a few, but doesn’t bother stopping. It’s only when his foot crunches over an abandoned solo cup and he stumbles, that he slows to a walk.

 

He’s panting, but knows it isn’t wholly from the run.

 

Even walking backwards, hands clasped behind his head and elbows thrown wide, he can’t make out Bittle’s house any more. The fact doesn’t do anything to slow his heart.

 

He stays walking backwards, remembering the softness of Bittle’s cheek under his lips, the way his bottom lip had turned pink and wet beneath his own teeth, his eyes so deep they almost seemed black. He remembers, too, the slow and careful way Bittle had spoken about hockey. He’d been gripped with need, the same way Jack felt near constantly.

 

The same way he _was_ feeling, at that exact moment.

 

He’s far from paying attention to anything but his memories of Bittle, which is probably why he stumbles again when he hears his name being called from across the street.

 

Kent jogs across the road without looking, throwing jovial arms around Jack’s shoulders when he’s within reach. Jack absently returns the hug, though is grateful when Kent pulls away.

“Where did you go, Zimmermann? You missed so much. We got chased out of the Samwell party by that giant blond dude, and then we ran into these girls and they took us to _their_ party, and it was this whole thing with like… wine coolers and those sparklers that you put on birthday cakes. I kept looking for you, but you weren’t there.”

He sounds mildly accusatory, and when Jack looks him in the face he notes his eyes are glassed and hazy, and there is a smudge of glitter on his cheek.

“Did you have fun?” Jack asks him, because he can’t tell Kent he wishes he’d been there – he’d been exactly where he wanted to be – but the least he can do is make sure Kent had been where he wanted to be as well.

 

Kent’s grin is reckless, almost absent. “Yeah,” he muses. He seems a little surprised.

 

“I called an Uber.” Kent’s words are slurring a little, and the fact Jack recognizes that strikes him as a sign of some sort. He no longer feels sweaty, and the Fall chill is starting to bite goosebumps into his skin. It livens something in his brain. He breathes in, deeply.

 

When the car pulls up, Jack gets in without preamble. He barely hears it when Kent asks the driver if he can put on some music, but distantly registers the peppy beat of a top forty track that Kent starts drumming along to on his knees.

 

The jersey Jack is wearing suddenly feels itchy, heavy, so he strips it off and shoves it into Kent’s lap.

 

It’s probably nothing more than pure coincidence that he looks out the car window just as they pass the Samwell hockey house, lights now off and seemingly clear of any stragglers.

 

As the car leaves the house behind, it hooks at Jack’s ribs and tugs, insistent.

 

“Stop the car.”

“Ah, Zimms! Hold it in like a grown up, come on.”

“No, Kenny, _shh_ – excuse me, sir? Can you stop, please? You still need to take him, but I need to get out.”

The driver does indeed pull over, and Jack is almost halfway out of the car when Kent makes a misguided swipe for his arm.

“You’re fucking crazy – get back in the car, Jack. Where are you –? Just get _back_ in the car.”

Jack shakes him off. “Kenny, put your seatbelt on.”

 

He makes sure that Kent is out of the way before shutting the door, which is really only a temporary barrier; Kent rolls down the window, even as Jack starts to walk away.

 

" _Zimmermann!_ You’re insane, just – come _back_. _Jack!_ ”

Jack’s already at a jog, already tracing his path back to the Samwell hockey house, following that pull in his sternum.

 

He hears Kent yell out one last time, something that sounds like “ _fuck you_ ,” but it barely cements itself in his thoughts as anything real; he’s reached the house, with its shadowed windows and black expanse of lawn. It’s wholly dark – except for one window, lit up yellow, and throwing a glowing square out onto the grass. By the window, touched barely by the light and crouching on the roof, is a figure. He’s almost a shadow himself, a secret and private thing, maybe not even visible to people who aren’t looking.

 

It’s Bittle. Sitting on the roof of his house, knees curled to his chest, mostly in darkness and yet still – Jack was right. He’s shining.

 

\---

 

Bitty had lain on his bed until he heard the final set of feet tromp to their room, and then he’d turned off all the lights except for his desk lamp with its weird golden bulb, and climbed out to the Reading Room.

 

His breath is fogging the air, just little puffs, but the cold wending its way under his thin pajamas is almost comforting.

 

Mostly, he feels stupid.

 

“Jack Zimmermann,” he mutters to himself, and punctuates it with a click of his tongue. It was one thing to become dramatically and abruptly obsessed with the captain of his team’s greatest rival, but it was entirely something else to fall for the sweet talking of someone who was high as a kite.

 

There is a long list of things which Bitty is wholly uninterested in becoming – among them, _drunken mistake_ and  _another notch in the belt_ – and nearly all had presented themselves in the form of Jack, and in Bitty’s own kitchen no less.

“You’re better than this,” Bitty tells himself. He tries to be firm. It is hard, though, when his mind insists on conjuring up the set of Jack’s mouth when he’d talked about hockey. The clear and arresting shade of his eyes. The smattering of stubble on his cheek; the hardness of his jaw. The firm heat with which he’d mouthed at Bitty’s cock through his shorts.

 

The warmth of his lips as they brushed Bitty’s cheek. The cadence of his voice as he’d called Bitty beautiful.

 

“You should really be wearing a toque or something, if you’re sitting outside.”

 

Bitty somehow manages not to yell for help at the top of his lungs. What he does instead is suck in a breath so violent that it sends him sputtering as he almost swallows his tongue, it also serving to unsettle him slightly from his perch and send him sliding, just briefly, down the gradual slant of the roof. He scrabbles at the tiles momentarily, before digging his toes in and stopping himself from sliding further.

“Jesus H Christ,” he hisses into the yard, in the general direction of the shadowed figure he can, now, make out standing just outside the square of light cast by Bitty’s own window onto the lawn. “There are more effective methods of murder!”

“Sorry,” the figure tells him, “I didn’t know how to – uh. Seemed like you’d be startled no matter what I did.”

 

The voice is deep, and rounded, and surprisingly familiar in a way that makes the very core of Bitty flood with the fiercest tingle of heat. He’s expecting it, really, when the man steps into the light and turns out to be Jack Zimmermann.

“Oh. It’s you.”

Jack doesn’t say anything, just shifts his weight between his feet for a moment. He’s divested himself of his Blackhawks jersey, revealing a plain white t-shirt. It makes him seem calm in a way he simply wasn’t before. Vulnerable, even.

 

“What are you doing back here?”

“I just – ah. I guess I…” He trails off with a shrug, a jerk of his shoulder that could be a statement, or just a twitch. He shakes his head at something unheard. “Can I come up there?”

“You can’t come inside,” Bitty blurts, an involuntary warning. Jack huffs something that could be a laugh.

“No,” he agrees, before striding up to the Haus.

 

Bitty cranes to look down at him, and watches as he hoists himself up on the balustrade edging the porch, before simultaneously reaching for the gutter and using the column as leverage to pull his upper-body onto the roof. He dangles for a moment, before swinging his leg up with an unprecedented show of dexterity, and using a final bit of momentum to roll himself fully onto the tiles.

 

He rights himself, settles facing Bitty with his legs bent loosely in front of himself, and Bitty stares.

“My goodness,” he says.

“Seems easier to talk without you having to shout down into the yard,” Jack replies mildly. Bitty feels his eyes widening, and his cheeks heating, and his traitorous mouth somehow filling entirely with saliva. He swallows, slowly and deliberately.

“If Shitty – or any of the boys, for that matter – catches you out here, they will throw you off this roof and not care even a little if your head breaks your fall.”

“It’s dark,” Jack hedges, shifting closer to Bitty on the roof. It’s not dark enough, though, to hide the glint in his eyes, nor the smirk about his mouth. “And I don’t know about you,” he continues now he’s sitting closer, seeming so warm Bitty swears he can feel it, “but I don’t plan on being very loud.”

Bitty squints at him. “Are you still –?” The continued effects of whatever substance had been coursing through Jack’s veins at the party – it seems the only likely explanation for Jack being at the Haus, again, and flirting, again.

Jack shakes his head. “No. It’s been, like, six hours, so I – ah, I need water, maybe, but I haven’t taken anything since we got to the party. It’s worn off.”

 

“Then what are you doing here?”

Bitty tries to sound demanding, but can’t really smother the hint of pleading that threads its way through his words. He needs Jack to let him down easy, to confirm that he only came back to apologize, to make whatever bro-coded amends he was planning for. He needs Jack to leave, and let him get back to wallowing – to let him forget, if he can, just how it felt to have Jack’s hands on his body and Jack’s voice telling him he was beautiful.

“I need you to know,” Jack begins, and Bitty is ready for it, pressing his lips together to steel himself, meeting Jack’s eyes as unblinkingly as he can, “that I don’t want you to get kicked off your team.”

 

It’s so far from what Bitty’s expecting that he doesn’t even have a chance to stop the inelegant, “huh?” that grunts its way from his throat.

 

“You’ve got potential,” Jack tells him, face gone over all serious, a small line appearing between his brows as his eyes – light, light blue, so piercing, and Bitty knows he’s staring – track over Bitty’s face. He feels appraised. “You can see the ice well, you got good hands… You’re a great skater. There’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to keep playing, if that’s what you want to do. They should have you out there more. Shit, you should be on their first line.”

 

Bitty’s stomach goes into freefall. It lifts with the kind of giddy elation that might come from being picked up suddenly by someone he cares about, or from jumping down stairs or off a chair just because he can. There’s no drop of meeting the ground after, though, just a swooping feeling that travels up his throat, fills his face with heat, and makes him gasp.

 

It feels good, having Jack compliment him. Better than good.

 

He becomes aware that he’s gaping a little, which is a behavior that matches exactly none of the manners his mama taught him. He sucks in a more decided breath, and says, “Well, I don’t know about all that.”

Jack shakes his head, once, firmly. “I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true. Bittle, I – ah, I know what I’m talking about. When it comes to this.”

“I suppose that is true,” Bitty concedes. Everyone knows about Jack’s lineage – about his father, ‘Bad’ Bob Zimmermann, who had swept the NHL with both points and penalties back in his day. Everyone knows about Jack’s path to greatness, from wunderkind to draft prospect. Everyone knows about the finishing-line stumble, and the second chance that Jack was taking at La Croix.

 

“Only golden boys get second chances,” Holster had said when they’d relayed the story to Bitty back in his freshman year. “Golden boys with cashed up daddies and a shit-ton of clout with every branch of hockey that matters.”

 

Bitty bites his lip, and has to look away. He can’t fathom Jack watching him like that, with such unchecked earnestness – not when he has unquestioningly absorbed such vitriol about him.

“Lord, the things people say about you.”

Jack snorts, softly but with clear resignation. “You don’t need to say it; I have… heard it _all_.”

“So – so what’s the play here, then?” Bitty keeps his voice low and his eyes down, shifting to sit with his keens sucked to his chest and tugging a little at a tiny hole in the seam of his sleep pants. “You help out the underdog and thus change the well-known tune for _The Ballad of Jack Zimmermann_? Gain some brownie points by taking a little protégé under your muscular, well-formed wing?”

 

The pleading notes are back to dancing around Bitty’s words, thoroughly belying his attempt to harden his voice and sound dismissive and disapproving.

 

Unexpectedly, Jack chuckles lowly.

“No. I really don’t think either of our teams would appreciate knowing we’re spending any time together. I mean, ah, if you wanted to spend time together. For hockey, or, you know… otherwise?” He finishes a little lamely, a slight uptick at the end that turns the word into a question. Bitty looks up, and finds he’s being observed with a tight smile and rounded eyes.

 

“What are your intentions, Jack Zimmermann?” It comes out as a whisper, tinged with awe the same way Bitty’s cheeks are probably tinged with red.

“Uh – checking practice. Maybe a couple times a week, until the game. But. Euh.” Jack rubs his hand across the back of his neck, a movement which strikes Bitty as distinctly nervous. He can sympathize, a tension rising in his limbs and a fluttering in his chest that he wishes Jack would still, somehow.

 

“I want to see you more often than that,” is how Jack finishes his thought.

It certainly stills _something_ in Bitty’s core, makes him lock up entirely – everything, except for his mouth, apparently.

“Please, just say what you mean. Please just say it, Jack.”

 

Jack swallows.

“I think you’re beautiful, and amazing, and I want you.”

 

The words are barely given time to hang in the air before Bitty surges up, operating on instinct alone, and crashes his mouth into Jack’s with as much accuracy as he can muster.

 

He’s risen to his knees, already feeling the hardness of the roof tiles grinding against them, and despite a momentary grunt of surprise, Jack’s hands fly to his waist. Bitty has gotten his arms looped about Jack’s neck, and cradles one hand at the crown of his head as Jack cranes up from his seated position and responds to Bitty’s insistent lips with his own.

 

Bitty licks his way into Jack’s mouth, humming even as he finds the staleness of beer there, tightening his grip in Jack’s hair as Jack sucks on his tongue. They trade tugs of lips, and Jack bites at Bitty’s lower one, and Bitty can’t help thrusting his way inside again.

 

He feels Jack’s broad hands covering what seems like most of his back, allows Jack to pull him closer until he’s kneeling between Jack’s legs, has to pull away because the way he’s curled down over Jack’s face is tightening the tendons across his shoulders. Bitty throws his head back, and gasps a breath out of the night air, but actually slowing his lungs is a futile pursuit: Jack turns his attentions to Bitty’s jaw, his neck, the edges of his collarbones exposed by his hoodie. He presses Bitty against his chest, trailing his hands down to grip into Bitty’s ass, and lets loose a groan into the base of Bitty’s throat.

 

 

 

Jack pulls Bitty tighter, and in adjusting himself to lean down again and kiss whatever part of Jack he can reach – which turns out to be his flushed and burning cheekbone – Bitty rubs his groin against Jack’s chest. The movement sends the same swooping flutter through his stomach again, punctuated by a throb from his stimulated cock, and he gasps sharply into Jack’s face.

 

Jack responds with a grunt as he kneads his grip into Bitty’s ass, sliding one hand down to hook around Bitty’s thigh just above his bent knee, encouraging Bitty to fit his leg against his own dick. Bitty grinds in with his knee, rubs against Jack’s chest, and is rewarded as Jack’s hand flies from Bitty’s leg to his hair and _tugs_. Head thrown back again, Bitty feels Jack breathing into his throat, nibbling along the lines presenting themselves there.

 

The feel of Jack against him, Jack’s teeth running over his Adam’s apple, the vibrations of Jack’s moans – it all fills Bitty with a smoldering and particular heat.

 

“Wait.”

Jack clearly doesn’t hear him, replying only with an unmistakable sweep of his tongue along Bitty’s jaw. He bites Bitty’s chin, briefly, and squeezes Bitty’s ass once more.

“ _Wait_ ,” Bitty insists, sliding his own hands to Jack’s shoulders and pushing, ever-so-slightly. Jack draws his head back, not sharply, but definitively. Even in the nighttime light and the dull glow from his own bedroom window, Bitty can see his pupils have flooded most of the blue out of his eyes.

 

“I need – I’m.” Bitty isn’t even sure what he wants to say. He leaves his hand clutched in Jack’s hair, but draws his other to traces his fingertips over Jack’s cheekbone. Jack’s eyes slide closed, briefly, before he turns into Bitty’s touch and kisses the palm of his hand.

“Eric,” he says.

“Call me Bitty.”

“Okay. Bitty. Is that all you needed?” He’s smiling now, and already leaning up with the clear intention of kissing again, so Bitty slides his hand from Jack’s cheek to his cover mouth.

“What’s going on here?”

“I want you,” Jack tells his hand. It’s muffled, sure, but unmistakable.

“You want me?”

Jack nods.

“This is – I mean, _Jack_ , this doesn’t feel quick to you? I mean, I’m not… I don’t want to push you into anything, and I definitely don’t want you to lie for the sake of my feelings, but –” Bitty has to pause, to think, because Jack is pressing another kiss to his palm, and it flares up something within Bitty’s chest. “This wouldn’t be just a one-night thing for me. I couldn’t handle that, not with – it’s just not me.”

 

With a series of molasses-slow movements, Jack slides his touch around Bitty’s body, finally coming to draw Bitty’s hand from his face. Jack holds Bitty’s hand between his own, running his thumb over Bitty’s knuckles, wrapping his own long fingers around the loose fist Bitty makes. He cradles it, tender, before guiding it back to his mouth to press one more lingering kiss, this time on the inside of Bitty’s wrist. Jack breathes there, for a moment, nuzzling warm and thoughtless into Bitty’s skin, eyes shut once more.

 

When he opens them again, it’s at the same time he murmurs, “I swear to you, that’s not what this is. It couldn’t be that, Bits. Not with you.”

“Not with you,” Bitty repeats. They’re both saying something else, he thinks – something that definitely shouldn’t be said to someone he’s only met several hours before and has spoken about a hundred words to. He clears his throat – he hadn’t even noticed the dryness of it, but the sound brings him back to what’s happening. The roof tiles are still digging into his knees, and the air is still cold, and they’re still sitting in the reading room, pretty much exposed to the world.

 

“This is so _quick_ .” He slides his hand from Jack’s hair to his shoulder, and pushes lightly as he shuffles back, away from the vee of Jack’s legs. Jack stays holding his wrist, Bitty’s arm now drawn between them like a tether – boy, string, and kite. “I need to go. I should go to sleep, and you should go back to – to wherever it is you should be, and we should both _think_ . I… god, I want you so much.” Jack’s expression hardens, sharpens, and he tugs again on Bitty’s wrist. Bitty allows himself to be pulled as far as kneeling again, but spreads his captive hand in the middle of Jack’s chest to prevent them getting any closer. “We need to give it _time_ , Jack. Give me some time.”

 

He trails his touch away as slowly as he can justify, before rolling to his feet and going about picking his way back up the roof to climb back through the window.

“So you’re just going to leave me completely unsatisfied?”

The words make the back of Bitty’s neck prickle, his fears from earlier scratching again at the periphery of his brain, but there’s nothing harsh in Jack’s tone. He sounds wholly unaggressive, his voice rather carrying the roundness of longing. Of yearning, even. Bitty turns back to him, and finds that Jack has stood as well, arms hanging listlessly at his sides and a pinched look on his face.

 

“Exactly what kind of satisfaction were you looking to get tonight, Mr. Zimmermann?”

Jack raises a hand and thoughtfully swipes his thumb over his bottom lip. Bitty catches that he’s shaking, just a little.

“Well, uh… I told you how – how _I_ feel. Only you, Bits. I told you. It’s only you.”

 

Before he considers that it’s a bad idea, and before his logic reminds him that they’re standing on a roof, Bitty launches himself at Jack for a second time. He is, thankfully, caught, gasping “It’s only you, Jack” even as he tries to find Jack’s mouth with his own. He murmurs it again against Jack’s lips, into the stubble on Jack’s cheek, directly into Jack’s ear with a hot breath and a peck left there as well. For his part, Jack clutches at Bitty’s body, mapping it with touch through his pajamas, smattering his own kisses across Bitty’s face and hair and neck.

 

Both of their breaths break harshly into the quiet night.

 

“Only you,” Bitty tells Jack again, sinking down onto the flat of his feet and pillowing his head against Jack’s chest. He can hear Jack’s heartbeat, strong and quick. Can feel it, even.

“Only you,” Jack confirms, closing his arms around Bitty’s form.

 

They stay like that until Bitty yawns into Jack’s t-shirt. He squeezes his eyes shut, and lets out a sigh.

“I don’t want you to have to go. It’s stupid, isn’t it, that I feel like I’m already counting the seconds until I see you again.”

“Tomorrow,” Jack murmurs, seemingly apropos of nothing. When Bitty makes an enquiring noise, he continues. “Give me your number, and I’ll text you tomorrow, and we can – checking practice. I’ll come get you, and we can go to the rink at my school, and then we can do whatever you want. Anything.”

“You’d better give me until at _least_ nine to get myself some proper rest.” Even as he says it, though, Bitty draws away from Jack’s embrace and takes his phone from the kangaroo pocket of his hoodie. He hands it over to Jack with the screen unlocked, and watches as Jack keys in his own number and shoots a text to himself. He hands Bitty back his phone, and Bitty can’t help brushing their fingers together as he takes it.

 

“I’m going to bed,” he says, as firmly as he can manage. “And you, you go…”

“I’ll go back to campus.”

“Right.” Bitty turns from him, but has taken barely a step back to his window when Jack says his name again. He turns, smile feeling soft.

“Jack?”

“I’ll text you.” Jack’s grinning now, red splotchy and reckless across his cheekbones, boyish and giddy even in the dark.

“ _Tomorrow,_ ” Bitty insists, and turns again to the window. He sits on the sill, preparing to swing his legs inside.

 

“ _Bitty_.”

Through a laugh, craning back around, he manages a whispered, “Sweetheart?”

“I’ll be thinking of you. All night – every second, until tomorrow. Only you.”

“You’re a charmer,” Bitty chuckles, but in spite of himself knows the smile he’s directing at Jack is the definition of _dopey_.

“I, uh – I can’t remember what I wanted to say.”

Bitty laughs again, hardly mindful of the noise or the time, and rests his cheek against the wood of the window frame. “I’ll just sit here then, until you remember.”

“I’ll never remember, with you sitting there. Like that.”

“ _Go_ ,” Bitty giggles, pressing a hand to his flaming cheek. “Get out of here – you’re absolutely ridiculous. You’re the sweetest, just the most – you’re _lovely_ , and a troublemaker, and I can’t go to bed with you sitting there so handsome. I’ll see you tomorrow,” he insists.

“You promise?”

“Cross my heart.”

 

He wins himself another euphoric smile, and sends his own warmly back before finally swinging his legs in through the window and climbing onto his bed. It’s with his hand pressed to the glass that he watches as Jack touches his fingers to his lips again, mouths _goodnight_ , and crosses to the edge of the roof to clamber his way down. Nose nearly touching the pane, he sees Jack’s figure backing across the lawn, face still upturned to Bitty’s window. On reaching the path, he pauses, and raises his hand one final time before striding off down the road.

 

Not long after Jack’s figure has disappeared from the field of vision Bitty has from his window, and with his desk lamp off and curtains drawn, Bitty lies back on his bed and tugs his pants down over his cock. If it only takes a few minutes for him to stroke himself to full hardness, and only a few more to come, and if he does so while biting Jack’s name into his pillow, he’s at least comforted by the absolute certainty that when he finally makes it back to his own house, and his own room, Jack will be doing the same.

 

\---

 

The shuttle to the train station closest to Samwell doesn’t start running until seven a.m.

 

This is the only reason why Jack is able to catch the sunrise across the river that runs through the campus: he’s too wired to be drowsy, huddled at the bus shelter as the frosted Fall sunlight rises around him, glinting off the water. It’s like shards on the surface. Like ice, white bright.

 

His entire body is tingling, and hasn’t stopped since he watched Bitty climb back through his bedroom window. It had only been two hours, but still: missing Bitty feels like those shards of light.

 

He wrestles his phone from his pocket, the display informing him it’s still too early to call. He’d kept Bitty up practically all night; he owed him a few hours of rest, at the very least. He swipes the phone unlocked, and calls a different number. It rings so long it almost rings out.

 

“’lo?”

“Dad.”

“Jack?” His dad’s voice sounds wrecked, still thoroughly sleep-clogged and unfocused. When he speaks again, it’s in slurred and lazy French.

 

« Do you know what time it is here? »

« We’re in the same time-zone. You can’t pull that on me. »

His dad grunts, and there’s a rustle of sheets. When he speaks again, it’s somehow more muffled. « You don’t have to get up at the crack of dawn every goddamn day. And I’m retired; I’ve earned my right to sleep in. »

« I didn’t just wake up. »

Bob makes a deep noise of confusion. « What, you didn’t go to bed? »

« I went to a party. Euh, at Samwell. I’m not home yet. » Jack figures honesty is the best policy, considering what he’s about to ask of his father.

 

There’s a long pause before Bob mutters, in sleep-accented English, “Don’t want to wake your mother.” It’s followed by more rustling, a small grunting sigh, and finally the sound of a door opening and closing again. Jack waits another moment, until he’s sure his dad is ready, before he says, “I need to tell you something.”

 

The hesitation on the other end of the line is clear. When Jack’s dad does speak again, it’s with the dryness of forced sarcasm in his voice.

« I know we don’t have a typical father-son relationship, but I feel like I have to draw a line at you giving me updates on your walks of shame. »

Jack can’t help huffing a laugh. He kind of wants to shoot back that he’s not ashamed, not even a little bit, but the irony of how close to home Bob is actually hitting – that’s too much.

« That’s not exactly… I mean, I did meet someone. At the party. That’s why I’m calling. It’s… I need your help, papa. » Jack calls his dad _papa_ on very rare occasions: in recent memory, as a gruff and defensive teenager, when he’d come out; when he’d woken in a hospital bed; and when he’d been accepted to La Croix.

« Jack, did something –? Did you...? Do I need to bail you out of somewhere? » Bob’s voice is sent high and quick, strangled with tension. It’s understandable.

« No, papa, listen to me. He plays for Samwell. His name’s Bittle. Eric Bittle. I need to figure out what I have to do so that we can work. I’m going to be with him. »

 

His dad’s intake of breath is sharp and unmistakable. The way he swears is long, and detailed. There’s a pause afterwards. When he makes an actual reply, his words are measured.

« This is a boy you met last night, who plays for an opposing team, who you’re going to conduct a public relationship with? »

« Well, not right away. I’m going to, you know… wait. Until I’m signed, maybe. Or after. I don’t know, yet. » It’s a hedge, he knows it, but said out loud like that – he knew, last night, that Bitty was right when he said things were going quickly. With the facts laid out before him though, and by his dad no less, Jack can maybe see some of the absurdity. He leans back against the glass that makes the bus shelter wall, swallowing against the dryness in his mouth.

 

The realization is sudden, a wave that crashes over every other thought and brings a slight sting of surprise with how easy it is. The truth is this: it doesn’t matter to him. It doesn’t matter that it’s unconventional, and sudden, and basically amounts to Jack admitting that hockey isn’t the only thing that matters. Bitty has fit himself wholly and unambiguously into every image Jack has of his future. Of that much, he’s sure.

 

His dad’s been quiet, shock and trepidation ringing in his silence. Jack knows the feeling. He clears his throat, and rubs his free hand over the back of his neck.

« Papa, Bittle is… he’s so fast, on the ice. I’ve seen him play, and he’s got some of the best stick handling in the league at the moment. He fights against so much, and he – he breathes the game. I can tell, eh? And he’s there, for his team. He supports them. He knows them. »

Down the line, Jack’s dad makes a gruff noise that sounds, at the edges, just the barest bit wet.

« He’s a strong player? »

They both know Jack’s talking at odds, isn’t really saying what he truly means, but it’s the only thing he can think to make it work. The words for how he feels for Bitty – they’re not coming as easy now.

« He’s – he belongs on their first line. He could take them to a win. » Jack means it both at face value and at the level he knows his father’s reading at. He really can’t blame Bob when he coughs gruffly, making a show of clearing his throat. His dad’s always been big on emotion.

 

« So, euh. What do you need from me? »

« What do we do? How do we make this… how do we stop it from blowing up in our faces? »

« I think you should wait until you’ve signed. Until you’ve graduated. You run fast, you fall down. Just keep things quiet, for now. » There’s a tone in Bob’s voice that reminds Jack of learning how to stand on skates; gentleness, and caution, and the cracked fringe of warning.

« I don’t want to keep him secret. » Jack isn’t certain of it until he says it out loud, but as soon as it’s left his mouth, he knows. He’d come out, with Bitty. Somewhere down the line, he’d be sharing his whole life with the world.

 

His dad hums in a considered way. « I know, Jack. I know. But you need to take it slowly. You need to give yourself – you need to give _the both of you_ time. You say he goes to Samwell? Well, you either get your own team turned against you with this, or you somehow get this animosity put aside. But Jack – listen. Are you listening? »

« Yes, papa. » Jack’s urge to roll his eyes is palpable. He settles for tipping his head back further against the glass of the bus shelter, to look at the roof.

« You need to be careful. You need to _go slowly_. »

 

The statement seems to as good as summon the shuttle bus, which rounds a corner and advances on the bus shelter as Jack rolls his head back down to survey the road.

 

It’s seven o’clock, and there are two more hours until he said he’d contact Bitty.

 

« Hey, dad, the bus is here. I need to go. »

« Oh, you’re –? Okay. Alright. Get some sleep, okay? Look after yourself. And hey, Jack? »

Jack’s already on his feet, wrestling in his pocket with his free hand for his wallet as the bus lurches to a stop in front of him and opens its doors in invitation.

« Yeah? »

« Your mother and I’ll be wanting to meet this Eric. You know, seeing as he’s such a good player. »

Jack’s laugh bursts out of him unexpectedly, and though he stands up to board a bus that will take him farther from Bitty, he knows they’ll be speaking in two short hours. He does it with a smile.


	3. act iii

Despite only about four hours sleep and the loud conversation happening in the kitchen, Bitty sings under his breath as he walks down the stairs in the morning. _Walks_ is perhaps not the most accurate term – _hops_ is better, perhaps. Or, more precisely, _dances_.

 

He all but twirls through the kitchen door, sashays his way to the cupboard for a coffee cup, and bunny hops over to the waiting jug. It’s not until he’s humming around a large sip from his mug that he notices the room has gone quiet, and he’s being stared at, unrepentantly, by all four of his Hausmates.

 

He swallows his mouthful.

“Good morning.”

 

Shitty jumps on it immediately. “Good, is it? Not great? Not the fucking best you’ve ever had?”

“Well, it’s just taken a significant downturn, to be honest.”

From her position on the kitchen island, legs crossed and her own mug clutched between her hands, Lardo snorts inelegantly. Bitty raises a conspiratorial brow at her.

“You sleep well, though? A nice long, hard… sleep?” Shitty’s grin is a little manic now, more baring of teeth than discernible smile. Next to him, Ransom’s expression is almost the same.

“Like a log,” Bitty tells him, winking over his mug as he takes another sip from his cup. “Ransom would know. He took me to bed.” Ransom sputters out a breath, and in the corner by the microwave, Holster barks a real laugh. Shitty holds up a defensive finger.

“I’m talking about before then, brah. When you slipped away into your little kitchen. Possibly doing some slipping of another kind, too.”

“What?”

“You know. Like. ‘Slipping one in’?” Bitty squints at him, and Shitty all but throws up his hands. “Fucking – you dicked down, Bittle. Who was it?”

 

Bitty takes another, milder, sip of coffee. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah bruh, for sure,” Shitty continues, hoisting himself onto the counter, “I come in here and you’re baking brownies? Yelling at little old me? _Zero_ chill.”

Holster scoffs in agreement. “Brownies? A likely story.”

“Oh, you think I haven’t noticed that empty pan, Adam Birkholtz? I heard all a y’all down here after I went to bed. You probably ate that whole batch straight outta the tin.”

Holster folds his arms, and Ransom snorts softly before turning away to refill his own coffee cup.

“Maybe so,” Shitty continues, “but that still doesn’t explain why you’re singing and shaking your ass around here like you just had the best orgasm of your little gay life. ‘Love On Top,’ Bitty. I know what I heard.”

“How _was_ that soc major last night, Shits? I could’ve sworn I saw her grinding up on Travers from rugby. Didn’t you say something about _showing her a good fucking time_?” Lardo says this dry and uninflected, more into her coffee than to Shitty personally. It does, though, make him inhale a mouthful of his own and devolve into a coughing fit.

 

“I’m makin’ breakfast,” Bitty announces, “and I’m using the pig bacon.” He throws what he intends to be an impassive look in Holster’s direction.

“Bits, why are you doing me like this? I barely said anything!” Holster gripes, but Bitty’s wholly done with that conversation. He busies himself pulling bacon and eggs from the fridge, and extricating his bowl of pre-prepared waffle batter from behind a six pack. Thankfully, it seems Holster is actually looking for a change of topic as well.

 

“Okay, well, as fascinating and majestic as the concept of Bitty getting his dick wet is – or, uh. Whatever it is when you’re a gay guy. Or. Just, _shit_. Can we please return to the real issues? That some La Croix assholes invaded our _home_ last night, and – what? We’re just going to let them get away with that?”

“They didn’t actually do anything,” Ransom intones judiciously. “You said Zimmermann was just dancing. Or, like, trying to.”

Bitty directs a smile down at the batter he’s folding, secure in the knowledge that he definitely isn’t the focus of the room any more. Holster makes a wounded noise.

“It’s not that they didn’t get the chance to fuck everything up for us – first time for everything, might I add. It’s that they clearly came here _deliberately_ to make us look like idiots. They wanted a fight.”

“To be fair,” Shitty starts in, clearly recovered from whatever injury Lardo had done to his ego, “when you started to go after Zimmermann, he ran. And Parson was the same, when I saw him. Straight out the door.”

“Because they’re a bunch of cowards who couldn’t handle the size of the dick after they pulled down the pants,” Holster insists.

“Jesus, Holtzy,” Lardo scoffs.

 

“They’re villains,” Holster continues, “Zimmermann and his pack of dickhead bros. They tried to fuck up our Hallowkegster, and they don’t know how to play a clean game of hockey.”

“They _have_ poisoned me against a perfectly innocent brand of soda water. Who knows? That could’ve had the potential to be my new favorite mixer.” Shitty’s tone is broadly musing, and he doesn’t seem to be making any real attempt to defuse the situation.

“It literally tastes like aftershave,” Lardo interjects. Bitty taps an egg against the table with a little too much force, and has to hurriedly slop it into the waiting skillet. It lands wonky. He _tsks_ under his breath.

“All I’m saying is, we maybe do deserve some like, fucking explanation. An apology, or whatever, for crashing the party.”

“What happened to _toning it down_?” Bitty tries to say gently, but it comes out accusatory and sharp. He cracks another egg into the pan, pretending to be absorbed by their progress as he resolutely avoids looking at Shitty.

“That’s exactly what I mean, Bitty. Look, _fuck_. We locked shit down for that kegster, and kept it all under wraps, and they decide to show up tossed out of their fucking minds anyway. We need to make sure this doesn’t happen again.” There’s an undercurrent to what he’s saying, an echo back to the conversation Bitty had with him in Boston: he clearly thinks, in some way, that this would be helping Bitty out. And that’s the rub, isn’t it? Because Bitty can’t tell any of them the real reason why he’d rather they not hunt down La Croix. For all intents and purposes, Jack is still _the enemy_.

 

“Bits. The eggs.”

At Lardo’s words, Bitty refocuses his glazed-over eyes to see both eggs smoking a little in the pan. He scrambles for a spatula and scoops them out onto a plate, barely containing his panicked gasp.

“Lord, I guess we’re going a little crunchy today then!” He titters a laugh, and turns the heat down on the gas burner. “Actually, Ransom honey, do you mind finishing up with this? I need to… I just gotta excuse myself for a moment.”

“Got some of that liquor virus, eh Bits?” Ransom chirps, but still sidles up next to Bitty and takes the spatula from him. Bitty laughs again, hearing it loud and fake. He hopes he’s the only one who registers it that way.

“One too many tub juices, probably. I’ll just grab some painkillers; be back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

Bitty all but scuttles out of the room without a backwards glance, leaping up the stairs two at a time and not stopping until he’s secure behind his bedroom door. The low-level panic he’s feeling is not a shade on what he was conflicted over the previous night, but he still feels set adrift. Unmoored, completely.

 

He takes his phone out of his hoodie pocket, and turns it in his hands. As though by some divine force, or just fortuitous circumstance, it vibrates.

 

It almost goes clattering to the floor as Bitty fumbles to hold it up and check the message. Although it’s what he’s hoping for, he still feels a trip in his chest when the screen reads nine a.m., and bears a text from a contact labelled only as JLZ. Bitty thumbs it open with little to no self-restraint.

 

JLZ (09:00)  
 _Are you busy today?_

 

Without any real reason for trying to smother his smile, Bitty still bites into his lip.

 

\---

 

Bitty knows, intellectually, that there’s no way it can always be like this – and yet, if he were to die with his back against the boards and Jack plastered all over his front, he thinks it would be an actualization of his only purpose in life.

 

He’s in full pads, his bucket the one thing missing, and Jack’s only in sweats, but Bitty hates that he can’t feel the heat of him, just the pressure. He’d stepped onto the ice, and Jack had lazily glided towards him before nudging him up against the glass and fitting their mouths together. Jack’s hands are planted either side of Bitty’s head, and for his own part Bitty can’t properly grip at him with his gloves on.

 

Jack surges in seemingly on a whim, licking deeper into Bitty’s mouth, teeth grazing at his lips, and Bitty’s head hits the glass.

“ _Ow_.” His protest comes out on a laugh, and Jack pulls back with a grimace. He slots one broad hand over where Bitty knows his cowlick sits, cradling.

“Sorry.” A second apology is murmured into the corner of Bitty’s smile, before Jack pushes himself lightly from the glass and glides backward a few feet. “I missed you, I guess.”

Bitty scoffs, leaning back into the barrier with as much nonchalance as he can manage. “After only a few hours? My, my.”

“You haven’t got a leg to stand on, Bittle. The way you were kissing back doesn’t lie.”

 

Bitty launches himself from the wall, shifting his weight to start meandering in his own lazy circle, around Jack. He cuts a wide berth, but Jack turns with him. Bitty puts a little more thrust in his skate, a little more speed, and feels his own hair ruffle in the breeze. He throws Jack a toothy smile, and gets a raised eyebrow and licked lip in return.

“You know,” Bitty muses, executing a mohawk as he skates, truthfully showing off more than anything else, “I would’ve thought checking practice would have a bit more checking.”

“Oh, you want me to check you?”

 

The spike of panic that pierces up through Bitty’s chest is not unfamiliar, nor is it unprecedented. He doesn’t miss the flicker of a frown, though, that trips its way across Jack’s face as Bitty, on instinct, trips back to the boards.

 

After moments of hanging silence, Bitty forces out a laugh which rings harsh across the rink, and uses the back of his gloved wrist to push his hair back from his forehead. He looks deliberately up the ice – well away from where Jack is still standing – to the La Croix shield painted at the center.

 

“Bud, I wasn’t going to –” Jack hesitates, sigh cutting sharp across the distance between them. Bitty tracks him in his periphery, noting as Jack begins to drift closer to where Bitty’s essentially clutching the wall for dear life. “I wouldn’t skate at you without warning.”

There’s still a foot or so of distance between them, a buffer, and Jack’s holding his hands up slightly. Placation.

 

The facts of Bitty’s vision blurring and his throat feeling tight don’t connect until he sniffs wetly, and hears Jack’s breath catch.

“ _Bits_ –”

“Wow. You know, I’m sure Faber – that’s our rink back at Samwell – well, it ain’t nearly this cold. The temperature in here’s got me sniffing like I’ve been out in a blizzard all afternoon.” His voice is doing that thing he can’t control, the high and overly-bright thing, where his vowels round out more and he sounds the way his mother does when talking to strangers at the supermarket. With the boys, it usually gets them begging their way out of the room or playing along with his subject change.

 

Jack, though.

 

“Bits. Can I hug you?”

 

Bitty swallows, the action sticking his tongue to the roof of his mouth. He squeezes his eyes shut; their wetness gathers on his eyelashes. It’s not difficult to shake a glove free and then press his naked hand over his eyes. He presses hard enough to see patterns behind his eyelids.

“It’s not you.”

There’s a pause. “Huh?” Jack’s voice still isn’t close, which bolsters Bitty a little. He drops his hand, but keeps his eyes closed.

“It’s not you,” he repeats. “I swear, I’m not scared of _you_ . It’s just – big guys, and getting hit, and – and bad memories, I guess. My high school’s football team was right about one thing, at least: _little baby Bittle_. Well,” he laughs, once, sharp, “two things, I guess.” He reaches out and, like that night at the party, snags his hold onto Jack’s sweatshirt, right in the center of his chest. He shakes it, lightly. “You can hug me.”

 

That’s all it takes for Jack to practically fall against him, to gather Bitty into his arms and tuck his own face into Bitty’s shoulder. Bitty lifts a hand to his hair, turning his head to press his nose there as well.

“Y _ou_ ,” Jack tells him, forceful, but seemingly unable to finish.

“ _Shh_.” Bitty presses a kiss to Jack’s head, eyes smarting again.

 

Jack straightens up, probably unintentionally jarring his forehead against Bitty’s cheekbone, but keeps his hold. Bitty finds his bumped cheek being pressed against Jack’s chest as Jack shifts to cradle his head there, leaving his own kiss in Bitty’s hair.

“There’s so much you don’t know about me,” Bitty mutters.

Jack laughs, outright – not loudly, but the deep kind of chuckle that carries both fondness and irony. Bitty hears it in the air, and from within Jack’s chest.

 

“Back at you, Bittle.”

They rest against each other, heavy, and that single unsettling word flutters in the back of Bitty’s mind again: _quick_.

 

He sighs, and pats at Jack’s shoulder as he pulls back. Jack’s expression, looking down at him, is naked and open. Completely unguarded. Bitty wonders idly how long it has been since Jack has just _let go_.

 

Probably as long, if not longer, as it has been for himself.

 

“Do you think, maybe, that… I mean, I know what we’ve said. I know what this is. But it still feels… how do we know this isn’t just infatuation?”

Jack hums, small and thoughtful, and lets go of Bitty entirely only to reach for his still-gloved hand and undress that one too. He then holds both of Bitty’s hands in his own, threading their fingers and pressing their palms together. It feels secure.

 

“I know because I can’t stop seeing you in my future. Maybe if things were different, if we’d met a different way or – or, if we were on the same team, or something, it’d be better to wait. But they’re not, and we’re not, so for now… we can just take this where it goes, between us. I want to give this the best chance, though. I want you for as long as you’ll have me. And when the time is right, I want everyone to know.”

“I’m so glad I’m not the only intense one,” Bitty confesses – blurts, almost. It rings between them, a little overly loud, before Jack snorts a laugh and Bitty feels his own chuckle bubbling in his throat. They keep laughing, even as Jack tugs on Bitty’s hands to draw him further out onto the ice, gliding easily and lazily.

 

“Come on; if we’re ever going to play against each other, we need to work on this thing. Pull your gloves back on, get your bucket, and go stand against the boards. I’ll go at you slow, I promise.”

Bitty obliges, retrieving his discarded gloves and collecting the helmet from where he’d left it on the barrier when he’d stepped onto the ice.

“If I cry again, just know that it’s not because of getting hit, and it’s not because of getting hurt, it’s just that I had nowhere _near_ enough sleep.” He fixes the helmet to his head and works his way to the glass.

“Is that right?”

Bitty hums, watching with the least amount of trepidation he can manage as Jack takes up position a good few feet from him – enough to gather real momentum. “Some jackass kept me up nearly the whole damn night. Something about me being completely irresistible?”

“Sounds like he should back off.”

“Hmm, I know! Someone should really tell him that I’m _definitely_ spoken for.”

 

Jack’s smile is fleeting, but bright, before he schools his expression back into one of vaguely-amused nonchalance.

“Get ready, okay? Brace yourself, then push off and skate through.”

Bitty aligns his shoulder with the glass, already crouching low in preparation for the impact. “Come on, honey. I trust you.”

 

\---

 

They spend the better part of two hours with Bitty being rammed into the boards, with Jack doing his best to follow Bitty’s instructions and ignore any tears that slip free. As soon as Bitty calls _stop_ , though, Jack allows him a few moments of composure before wrapping him in another hug and murmuring endless streams of praise into his hair. He doesn’t let go until Bitty’s laughing and writhing against his chest, calling him “insatiable.”

 

Jack decides he likes being “insatiable.”

 

It’s only the sounds of chattering voices arriving for afternoon beginner skating classes that pull them from the ice, Jack directing Bitty to change and meet him out at the loading dock. They’re secluded out there, secret, so Jack hoists Bitty up onto the ledge of the loading bay, slots himself between Bitty’s legs, and cranes up to kiss him. Bitty’s fingers curl into Jack’s hair, loose and delicate, and his kisses are curved by smiles.

 

Pulling apart takes time, takes until the afternoon sun is beating unseasonably hot on the back of Jack’s neck. He inhales the scent of Bitty’s skin from under the jut of his jaw, deep as he can, trying to catalogue the salt and spice of him. Jack watches him walk away, raises his hand to his mouth when Bitty looks back, and doesn’t even want to anchor the floating feeling deep in his stomach.

 

He’s humming when he walks through the door to the apartment he shares with three of his team; student housing for seniors and grad students – small bedrooms, and a kitchen some way between mid-sized and needing the suffix –ette. It’s always quiet, often empty, and what is cooked is usually pre-packaged. It’s worlds from the house Bitty lives in: that’s a home, with friends; this is accommodation, with roommates.

 

Well. Roommates, and Kent.

 

Kent, who is rolling up his sleeves and looking like he’s on his way out. Jack feels himself grinning bigger on seeing him, and this whole mix of things that Bitty makes him feel – he wants Kent to know.

“Kenny!”

He freezes in the opening of the hallway that leads to all their bedrooms, clearly startled by the sudden volume of Jack’s voice.

“Hey, man.”

Jack crosses to him, and though they’re not really sober hugging friends, he wants Kent to _know_. He’s happy, and it’s because of Bitty, and he wouldn’t be feeling all of this if Kent hadn’t convinced him to go to the party in the first place. He owes Kent something, in a way.

 

Kent’s arms come around him cautiously, mirroring the way Jack pats his back. When Jack steps back, he keeps his hands on Kent’s shoulders. He’s grinning, still, but Kent’s looking at him with a raised eyebrow and a smirk.

“Okay. Bit early in the day, isn’t it Zimms?”

“I just – thanks, Kenny. For the party last night. It was a good idea.”

Kent snorts, and ducks from under Jack’s hands to continue on his path to the front door. “I haven’t forgot you ditching me, Zimmermann. _Twice_. I feel like I deserve more than a hug and a thank you.” His smirk shifts to something of a leer, and he shoves his hands in his pockets, eyebrow still firmly cocked. Jack falters.

 

It’s not that they haven’t done things before. It’s happened three times, once a year, post-cup-game, frantic hands and mouths only, fueled by chemical stimulation. They never talk about it, after. Jack never even thinks about it, after.

 

Kent rolls his eyes at Jack’s silence, shaking head and shrugging shoulder, huffing another laugh. “Buy me lunch, you dipshit. Jesus Christ.” He yanks the door open, and holds it until Jack laughs back and takes the invitation.

“Least I can do. Considering I ditched you, I mean.”

“You think this is the entirety of you paying me back? Shit, no. You’re giving me real deets on where you went and who you did.”

The sound of Kent locking the apartment door behind them seems to echo overly-loud down the empty hallway, the same as Jack’s defensive _ha_.

“What makes you think there was any doing?”

“Don’t insult my fucking intelligence, Zimmermann. Come on. I want a smoothie.”

 

\---

 

The day has only gotten hotter, a fact which Jack is finding distinctly irritating considering it’s officially November. He has to remove his jacket, and the smoothie he bought himself – a green one for fiber and iron, while Kent had gone for berries and antioxidants – is sweating in his hand.

 

Hill Square is one of the more empty grassed areas on campus, even on sunny days. It makes a good spot to sit, and a good spot for Jack to think about coming clean to Kent. To telling him everything, out of the earshot of anyone else. Also, the Class of ’23 rink is semi-visible from up on the Hill. Jack likes its stoicism, its utilitarian outer. All concrete and harsh lines. With the sun edging lower in the sky, it’s pulling the building’s edges to sharp relief, and tugging Jack and Kent’s seated shadows in long shapes over the bricked pathway and the grass, still patched brown in some places from a long summer.

 

Jack looks over their shadows, follows them over the path where they spread, and then beyond and down the hill. A pair of figures entering the park and starting their way up draws his eye, but he disregards them, instead turning on the bench to face Kent fully.

“Kent, listen.”

Kent doesn’t say anything, but sucks down a mouthful of his smoothie and inclines an eyebrow in Jack’s direction. It’s encouragement enough.

“I know I’ve been… weird. Shit’s been stressful, eh? And with what Willard said – I got nervous, and I took it out on you.” Kent hums his agreement, but doesn’t look over. “You were right, about the party. It was what I needed, and I just didn’t want to admit it.”

“What was that?”

Jack snorts. “You were right, alright? You were a dickhead about it, but you were right.”

“Yeah, well. You need a manager.”

 

A throat clears.

 

The pair who Jack had noticed have crested the hill, now hovering in the lengthened shadows that Jack had been focused on before. Their figures add to the black mass on the grass, stretching it longer and larger. Their faces, though, are lit by the sun. Birkholtz, and Knight. The one Bitty says they call ‘Shitty.’

“Zimmermann.”

“Birkholtz.”

 

The silence stretches, a little awkward, and Jack sets his smoothie aside.

“Nice day for a walk,” he comments, mild as he can. He doesn’t miss the slight uptick of a smile beneath Shitty’s moustache, or the deepening of Birkholtz’s frown.

 

“Yeah, sorry to interrupt your little date, or whatever –”

“Date?” Kent’s voice is sharp, a definite slice, and he too sets his smoothie on the bench. He goes one further than Jack, though, and stands up. “Got something you’re implying, Birkholtz?”

“No, nothing. Just that you two like going places together. Here. Boston. Our house.”

“Yeah, look, Birkholtz –” Jack leans forward, trying to put something apologetic in his voice. Kent seems to have other ideas, though. When he speaks, it’s still knifed. Combative.

“It was a party, wasn’t it?”

“And you shitheads weren’t invited. I’ve always thought you were stupid, but I didn’t realize you had a freaking death-wish.”

 

Kent seems ready to retort again, to turn this into something it shouldn’t be, so Jack stands. Birkholtz bares his teeth.

“Sorry. It was dumb of us. But no harm, no foul, eh?” Jack holds out his hand. Birkholtz stares at it.

“Good to know you’ve turned into a fucking pussy, Zimmermann.”

“I just don’t think –”

“No harm, no foul, huh? Well, what about this one: if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.” He reaches up and nudges Jack’s hand out of the air, following it up with a slight shove to his shoulder. Despite Shitty’s muttered “Holtzy,” he keeps going. “Don’t pretend you weren’t looking for a fight when you turned up. I don’t know what made you run away, or what’s making you chicken out now –” _Bitty_ , the back of Jack’s mind echoes, _it’s for Bitty_ , but he can’t say that, not out loud – “but I figure you’re owed this.” He shoves Jack again.

“Ay, easy.” Kent pushes Birkholtz himself, enough to make him stumble back a single step. Birkholtz surges forward, and pushes back.

 

Jack elbows his way between them.

“ _Hey_ , Birkholtz, just listen –”

 

The fist that collides with Jack’s face is not wearing a ring.

 

Still, it sends his brain sloshing inside his skull, sends the throbbing ache of a solid hit deep into his bones, and sends him sprawling across the path. He catches his weight on his elbows, concrete pulling grazes across his skin. For some reason, his first thought in that moment is that he hopes there is some antiseptic in his bathroom cabinet.

 

Jack may be more agile on the ice, may be technically stronger if they were to compare sledge weights or bench limits, but Birkholtz has a few inches on him and it seems to be making all the difference. He takes advantage of Jack’s prone position, kneels over him and curls a fist in the collar of his shirt. It’s stupidly easy, then, for him to punch Jack in the jaw. It puts blood on Jack’s tongue, and makes the plate he’s had since he was nineteen twist uncomfortably against the roof of his mouth.

 

He makes an attempt to push Birkholtz off, to shove at his chest and unseat him, choking out, “Get off me – _stop_ –” but then an arm wraps itself around Birkholtz’s neck and he’s getting pulled away regardless of Jack’s efforts.

 

Kent has always been scrappy, always fought to the teeth. He’s needed to, not having the height or weight on other guys. It’s the same on the ice; dirty, maybe, but smart. The chokehold he puts Birkholtz in – it’s effective because it’s unexpected. That’s why it gets Birkholtz thrown back on the ground, Kent pinned behind him with arms around Birkholtz’s throat and legs scrambling to kick at any part he can get to. What it doesn’t do, though, is account for their size difference, which is probably why it’s only a matter of seconds before Birkholtz wrestles out of Kent’s grip and reverses their positions. It’s probably why it’s so easy for Birkholtz to pull Kent up by his shirt, and slam him back to the pavers. It’s probably why the yelling cuts off, so everyone hears the crack of bone on brick.

“Fuck, stop – _stop_!”

Jack isn’t sure who says it, but Birkholtz stops.

 

Shitty pulls him away and hauls him up, but once he’s gone from where Kent’s laying, Jack doesn’t look at him anymore. Kent blinks up at the sky rapidly, mouth gaping a little. He shifts, raising his head slightly in an attempt to sit up, and winces.

“Kenny – careful, come on.” Jack crawls to his side, kneeling and reaching to steady Kent’s shoulders at the same time. “Slowly, alright? Slowly.”

 

He helps Kent to sitting, keeping eyes on his face. A gasp from behind draws his attention back to the brick where Kent’s head was. There’s blood.

 

Before he thinks about it, Jack is reaching to feel over the back of Kent’s head, to search for the wet patch of the wound. He hisses when he finds it, and Kent sharply demands, “what?”

 

Jack shows him his fingers, blood coating the tips. Kent fits his own palm over the cut.

“It’s nothing. I’m fine. Head wounds always bleed a lot.”

“Does anyone know the concussion test?”

Shitty clearly tries to say it lowly, but completely fails in the subtlety. Kent’s eyes dart over Jack’s shoulder, where the Samwell players must be standing.

“Shut the _fuck up_ , it’s not – the ‘c’ word. It’s not that. It’s just some fucking blood.”

“Kenny. Come on.” Jack pitches his voice low, trying to ignore the two behind him, trying to bite down on the mixed roil of fear and anger that’s surging in his chest. “Let me ask you. We need to make sure.”

Kent blinks back to him, but it’s molasses-slow and his gaze doesn’t quite land on Jack’s face. He’s unfocused.

“How you feeling?”

 

Kent swallows, takes in a shaky breath. It sounds wet. “It’s fine, it’s just – just a headache, a bit of pressure, I –” He breaks off with a slight gagging noise, and another sedated blink.

Jack swallows too. His mouth is dry, all of a sudden. “What month is it?”

“I, uh – um.” Kent closes his eyes, face scrunching with the movement. “It – shit. _Shit_.”

“Okay. Alright. It’s fine, Kenny. We’ll go to the doc, it’s –”

“Shut the fuck up. Don’t call me fucking Kenny. You – this is your fault, you fucking asshole, if you’d just fought back instead of – you fucking _pussy_ –”

 

He throws an elbow at Jack, and though it doesn’t land hard, Jack obeys the implication. He sits heavily back on the footpath, unable to do anything but watch as Kent struggles to his feet, hand still clamped to the back of his head.

 

Shitty makes to shuffle forward, hand outstretched as Kent tips a little on shaky feet.

“Hey, bruh, maybe you should wait for –”

“Fuck you,” Kent spits at him, even as he lurches unsteadily. “Fuck all of you. You all did this – you’ve all – _fuck all of you_.” He stumbles, catching himself on the bench he and Jack had been sitting on. He settles into it heavily, next to Jack’s discarded jacket, and his words settle in Jack’s gut.

He’s not wrong. If Jack had fought back – if Jack had come clean, if he’d come _out_ , if he’d just admitted to everything and laid his honesty out for everyone to see…

 

“Shit. Parson, I –”

Birkholtz cuts himself off, and when Jack looks over, his face has crumpled. His eyes are wide. Shock.

 

Jack lunges at him.

“What are you even doing here? This is on you, you fucking – he’s going to be out for the rest of the season, and _that’s on you_ . Whatever your stupid joke of a school does to you –” his face is so close to Birkholtz’s now, their noses almost touching, Jack fisting the collar of his shirt and pulling it tight about his neck – “it will be _nothing_ compared to what you’ve done to him.”

He shakes one hand free, and pulls back the punch. It lands on Birkholtz’s ear, and when Jack relinquishes his hold entirely, he drops to the grass clutching at his head. There’s some blood, between his fingers.

 

Shitty breathes out “fuck,” and Kent yells Jack’s name, and Birkholtz lets loose a guttural groan, and Jack.

 

Jack runs.

 

\---

 

Ransom is yelling, and Bitty can hear it from the kitchen, even though it’s happening two floors up and he’s got his baking mix playing from his phone on the bench.

 

He sighs, and though he had been intending to make an experimental pumpkin pie with a new spice blend, diverts his course to the peaches he’d thankfully picked up from the fruit stand he’d passed on his way home from La Croix. They had been glowing gently in the light, sunset-colored and full, a little box of orange hearts. They’d been intended for grilling, turning into relish to try something savory, but Ransom seemed like he needed pie.

 

Bitty’s hand is pulling the jar of honey down from the shelf when Ransom’s feet start to thunder down the stairs, loud even over the music.

“Bitty!”

The jar gets set next to the peaches, and Bitty calls back, “In here!” and retrieves a mixing bowl from the cupboard by the sink.

 

Ransom all but throws himself through the kitchen doorway, phone clutched in his hand and expression veritably wild. His eyes are wet; his cheeks, shiny with tears. Bitty drops the mixing bowl. It clatters on the linoleum, metallic and dull.

“Ransom –”

“Fucking La Croix, Bits, they – Holster. Zimmermann, he.” Ransom breaks off with a strangled noise. Bitty’s stomach lurches.

“What happened?” He’s whispering, for some reason. His voice won’t go louder. He can’t swallow. Everything – his mouth, his throat – it’s all dry. Why can’t he swallow?

 

“Holster and Shits, they went to La Croix. Because of the party. Zimmermann hit him, he – Holster’s in the hospital, Shitty said something about his head, I don’t –”

“Jack hit him?”

Ransom looks at him like he’s gone insane, brow drawn tight with confusion and mouth agape. Bitty thinks, for a moment, that maybe he has. Maybe he’s lost his mind, and this is all a horrible hallucination. Maybe he’s actually asleep, and he’s about to wake up and go see Jack.

 

Ransom’s voice seems overly-loud when he speaks again, ringing above the music. The pop beats now grate in Bitty’s mind.

“He’s in the hospital; Shitty drove him back. I’m going. Are you coming with me?”

 

Bitty leaves his phone on the counter, serenading the empty room.


	4. act iv

The dial tone seems endless, and with each ring, Jack thinks his breath quickens.

 

When it stops, he doesn’t give his father time to talk before he’s gasping " _papa_ ” down the line.

“I fucked up, papa, please. I need your help – it’s so bad, I don’t know what –”

“Jack. Are you hurt?”

Jack tries to breathe through his nose, inhales as much air as he can in one go, tips his head back to the sky. It’s now the deep purple-grey of twilight. It’s solid, pushing down on Jack’s head.

“I’m not hurt. I’m – my breathing, I. I’m not hurt.”

“Where are you?”

Jack tilts his head down from the sky. Concrete. A shelter. Raised platforms.

“The train station.”

“Okay,” Bob mutters, and even through the rushing in his ears, Jack can recognize the voice Bob uses when he’s trying to calm them both. It’s been years since Jack’s heard him use it. But then again, Jack hasn’t messed up like this since he was eighteen. “What happened?”

 

That’s what he says, but Jack hears _what did you do?_

“I hit him. I didn’t mean – it was too hard, I didn’t want it to be that bad, but he –”

“Who?”

“Birkholtz. From the Samwell team.”

“Is he hurt?”

“I – I don’t know. He was bleeding. I ran away.” There’s silence down the phone line, and dark edges start to bleed into Jack’s vision. “Papa, please. I didn’t mean to.”

“It’s okay. Jack, it’ll be okay. We’ll figure it out. Where are you going, on the train?”

Jack blinks. He’d run to the train station, and was on the platform, and was going –

“To Bittle. I need Bittle.”

“Good,” his dad says, seemingly as much to himself as to Jack. “Go there, please. Stay on the phone with me, and tell me what happened. _En français_. We’ll figure it out.”

 

\---

 

It’s a cruel twist of fate that makes it so Bitty’s phone is playing through ‘I Miss You’ when he walks through the door. It’s all he can do not to sob out loud as he treads directly to the kitchen and, for the first time in his life, silences Beyoncé mid-chorus.

 

He notices two things as he palms his phone and starts to shuffle toward the stairs: that his battery is dangerously low (though that’s probably to be expected after leaving it playing music unattended, for hours); and he has dozens of notifications from Jack.

 

Muscle memory carries him up the stairs as he deliberates over placing a returning call. His eyes start to prickle, trying to force out more tears despite Bitty having cried himself hoarse at the hospital. He hadn’t been the only one; as he recounted the entire story – of Holster hitting Parson, of Jack hitting Holster – Shitty’s eyes had been red-rimmed and his cheeks gaunt. Ransom’s angry tears had continued even until Bitty had decided he couldn’t take any more and had to leave. Lardo had been the only one dry, instead standing with them in the waiting room with tightly folded arms and tense jaw.

 

The worst part, maybe, had been the thrill of relief Bitty had felt on hearing that Parson had attacked Holster to get him off Jack. That Jack wasn’t likely to end up in hospital himself.

 

He sniffs miserably as he reaches the landing, scrolling through the texts Jack had sent him. They’re all some variation of _I’m sorry_ and _please call me back_ , and they make Bitty’s lungs feel tight.

“Oh, _lord_.” He can’t hold back the sob any more, and it wrenches out of him as he opens the door to his room and edges inside.

“Bitty.”

He barely catches a glimpse of Jack, sitting on his bed – of _course_ he’s sitting on Bitty’s bed – before he clamps his hands over his face and sobs again.

“Please, _no_ , you’re not here. You can’t be here.” The edge of his phone case is digging into his cheek, and it’s uncomfortable, but Bitty can’t take his hands away. He can’t have Jack be found here – couldn’t handle what the boys might do to him if they did. Articulating that out loud though, seems overly dramatic. Maybe, if he keeps hands over his eyes, Jack will have disappeared to somewhere safe when he looks again.

 

“Okay, I’ll go. I’ll leave. But I just need to tell you, first – Bitty. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Bits. This whole thing – it’s my fault. There’s so much I could’ve –”

“It’s not. Don’t say that, sweetheart. I know it’s not.” Bitty drops his hands, breathes in deeply, and finally opens his eyes. Jack stands by his bed, tired-eyed and pale. His jaw carries a bruise, and his hair is pushed back, as though he’s been running his hands through it unendingly.

 

Bitty walks forward, slow and careful, and when he’s within reach he lifts a hand to press his fingertips to the center of Jack’s chest. It’s a barely-there touch, but it’s enough. He lets out a deep-set breath.

“Shitty told me. He told me it all, so I know – really, it’s not all your fault. Not entirely. Holster, he –” Bitty breaks off, sighing again, sharper this time. He can’t look into Jack’s face, keeps his eyes trained on the shirt button just above his fingers. For his part, Jack doesn’t move. “I’m really glad you’re not injured.”

 

Jack clears his throat. His voice, when he speaks, is shaky. Brittle. His words are cracks. “Is he okay? Did I hurt him?”

“Oh,” Bitty murmurs, and flattens his hand against the fabric of Jack’s shirt. “Oh, honey, he’s going to be fine. It’s a perforated eardrum. Should heal on its own, no surgery or anything, but – um, he’ll be out for a while, probably.”

Jack makes a wounded noise, one ringing of regret, and Bitty looks up. Jack’s face seems pinched all over, tight and drawn. “I’m so sorry,” he whispers again, and Bitty slides his hand from chest to marred jaw.

 

“I know Kent Parson has a concussion. It’s not an excuse – I’m… Jack, you shouldn’t have done what you did. I don’t know what to feel right now.” It’s confession more than condemnation. He’s trying to be truthful, even though it’s making Jack’s face appear increasingly hollow-eyed. “I don’t want you to go,” he says finally.

 

Jack all but collapses against him at the admission, tucking his face into Bitty’s neck and wrapping his arms, tight and fierce, around his torso. Bitty reciprocates, for once having the height advantage due to Jack being hunched over so forcefully. He wraps arms around Jack’s neck, threading one hand into his hair and cooing “ _shh_.”

“I need help,” Jack hisses into his collar, shaking his head against Bitty’s skin and grasping at him desperately. “I need to get out; I can’t let this happen again. I can’t do this to myself again, I can’t – I love you so much, Bits. I don’t want to do this to you.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to you. We’ll be fine. You might need to be careful, especially around here – but you’ll be fine.”

Jack nods, rubbing his face against Bitty’s neck. He straightens a little, and does the same to Bitty’s hair. Bitty hears him breathe in deeply, and finds himself lifting to his toes to keep his arms secure around Jack’s shoulders through him standing up.

 

“My dad booked a flight. Tomorrow morning, I’m flying back home. Just for a little while, uh – I talked to my coach; I’m going to organize some time. A couple weeks.”

“You’re leaving?”

“I have to, Bits. Last time I felt like this, I – it’s better, if I go home.”

“Home.” Bitty hears his own voice gone small and flaky. He pushes himself higher, rubbing his own nose into Jack’s hair, just behind his ear.

“Montréal. I’ll be back before you know it. I promise.”

Bitty breathes, over moments, and lets the idea seep into his mind. After only days – had it only been two? – he already aches when Jack’s not with him. And now, they’ll be separated by more than a train ride, for much longer than mere hours. Though the word _infatuation_ floats yet again to the front of his mind, what he says out loud is, “You’ll miss the game.”

Jack chuckles into the side of his head, a wet and clogged sound. “I’ll miss _you_.”

“And checking practice,” Bitty continues.

“I’ll be there, for the game. And I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“What’re you going to do, big boy? Go goon against your own team?”

 

They’re both laughing then, quiet and weak, and Bitty sinks back to the flats of his feet to step away. He loosens his arms until only his hands are left holding Jack’s face between his palms. For his part, Jack spreads his fingers across Bitty’s spine.

“I just want you to have the best opportunity to show everyone what you can do,” Jack tells him, and Bitty somehow manages not to fall back against his chest right then.

“You’ll be there,” he says instead, “and I’ll be here, and when you get back –”

“We’ll both be here,” Jack teases, edging his fingertips lightly under Bitty’s shirt and grazing the skin of his lower back. “It’s good practice, for next year. When I’m… you know. Graduated.”

“You think we’re going to be together next year?”

“You think we’re not? Did you already forget what I told you this morning? I’m pretty sure you’re it for me, Bits. When you know, you know.”

 

Bitty pulls his face down, and presses their lips together. He does it gently, barely, and Jack makes a tiny noise against his mouth. Bitty presses more firmly, and Jack kisses him back, and when they both finally draw away, the last tints of sunlight are gone. Outside is dark, and they are alone.

 

\---

 

Bitty wakes with his hand being held.

 

He blinks, bleary, and even through sleep-gummy eyes can make out Jack lying on the opposite pillow, watching him. He grunts, but can’t make a real word yet.

“It’s okay; I‘ve only been awake a few minutes.” It doesn’t quite answer the question Bitty had been thinking of, but it’s valuable information nonetheless. At least he knows he hadn’t been snoring in Jack’s face for all too long.

“You look so beautiful when you sleep.”

Bitty snuffles something that might be a scoff if he were more awake, and turns his face into the pillow. He lets Jack keep holding his hand, and squeezes back.

“You _charmer_. I thought I was beautiful when I was awake?” He’s still sleep-raspy, drawl and twang broader even to his own ears.

“You’re relentlessly gorgeous,” Jack tells him, and presses a kiss to his knuckles. Bitty hums his appreciation, and gets exactly what he was hoping for when Jack shuffles closer and kisses his cheek.

“You should go, before the boys wake up. I especially don’t think Holster will be too happy to see you. Actually, Ransom might be madder.”

“I can handle it,” Jack mutters hotly into Bitty’s jaw, rubbing his lips across the skin there. They’re chapped, and a little rough, but in spite of his words Bitty leans into it. “They can do whatever the fuck they want, as long as they don’t take me out of your bed.”

“If y’all get blood on my sheets in the ensuing massacre, I’ll kick you out of this bed myself.”

Jack huffs a laugh, still low, still hot, and mouths at Bitty’s chin with more intent. There are the beginnings of real stubble on his face, and as it scrapes against Bitty’s comparatively smooth cheek, it tingles.

“Don’t you think it might exacerbate the situation to – _oh_ ,” he gasps as Jack noses over to his neck and sucks deliberately on his pulse point, “t-to find you defiling their most treasured frog? They can be very pro– _ah!_ Protective.” Jack has fit his hand under Bitty’s chin, angling his head further up on the pillow as he applies his teeth, tongue, and lips along the tendons of Bitty’s neck with clear purpose.

“I’m not defiling you,” Jack insists with a near-growl. Bitty chokes out a noise halfway giggle and halfway moan.

“All evidence to the contrary.”

 

Jack stills, just for a moment, and pulls back, propping himself up inches and allowing Bitty to turn onto his back. He searches Bitty’s face with eyes that could only be described as _tender_.

 

“That’s not what this is. I want to love you.”

Bitty’s breath catches in his throat. His eyes flutter and lose focus, seemingly out of his control. The heat that is coursing through his body feels like it rushes wholly to his cheeks.

“ _Oh_ ,” is all he manages to say.

Jack tangles the hand of the arm he’s leaning on into Bitty’s hair, tracing fingers through the locks with gentle and specific care. His other hand, he brings to Bitty’s face, first grazing his fingertips across Bitty’s eyebrow, then cupping his palm around Bitty’s cheek. He leans down, carefully, and presses a single soft, dry kiss to Bitty’s mouth.

“If you want me to,” Jack says, “I want to love every inch of you.”

 

Bitty molds his hand to Jack’s neck, brushing his thumb over the line of Jack’s jaw.

“Only you,” Bitty tells him. “Do you know what I mean by that? I’ve only loved you. And I think I’ll only ever love you.”

“Only you,” Jack confirms. “I love you so much, Bits. Only you.”

 

With the early morning light filtering through the weave of Bitty’s curtains, Jack is rendered nearly in shades of blue. He is clear, and calming, and it strikes Bitty of the softness of twilight and the easy clarity of passion in that time of day. He trails his hand down Jack’s neck, over his chest, and to the hem of his flannel, where he slides his hand underneath and traces back up over the planes of Jack’s body. He finds Jack’s pectoral muscle, on the left side, light smattering of slightly rough hair, blazingly warm under his touch. Jack leans into his fingers, eyes sliding closed. He mirrors Bitty’s attentions, guiding his own hand from Bitty’s face, down under his shirt and up to the part of his chest beneath which his heart sits.

 

Bitty breathes, and Jack breathes, and the moment holds itself.

 

When Bitty lifts his head from his pillow to meet Jack’s lips, Jack clearly takes it as a sign.

 

Both of their mouths are morning-sour, so they keep their kisses closed. It’s not long before Jack is smudging his lips across Bitty’s cheek in the way he is wont to do, tilting himself sideways and raising his body over Bitty’s as he does so.

 

Bitty clutches at him, both hands now rucked up under his shirt and spreading over his ribs. His breaths are rasping, already harsher, but Jack is breathing rough too, directly into Bitty’s ear as he runs his own fingers down Bitty’s side and grips into his hipbone. Somehow, even without their lips touching, Bitty feels it all as acutely as if he could taste Jack on his tongue.

 

Jack pushes at Bitty’s shirt, riding it up until it’s at his armpits and forcing him to raise his arms above his head. With some struggling, and some re-positioning where Bitty has to sit up and Jack lifts himself to kneeling, the shirt is removed and tossed in the approximate direction of the hamper in the corner.

 

There is a shaft of light breaking its way through the drawn curtains, the kind of greyish morning light that washes color from everything, but when Bitty looks down at his own bare chest and sees it falling there, he notices the way it actually turns his skin almost lucent. Moon-like. Jack’s hand strays into his field of vision, laying itself over the center of his chest, warm and solid and pale in the splinter of sun.

“You’re so beautiful,” Jack murmurs, and Bitty hopes the sun is enough to hide the flush of heat he feels spreading from his cheeks.

“Not so bad yourself,” Bitty quips, raising his head to meet Jack’s eyes, and finding them nearly pooled in black. Kneeling in front of Jack, it’s easy to reach out to unbutton his flannel, the fabric still warm from sleep. The shirt goes easily until it catches on Jack’s elbows, and they both chuckle lowly through mutters of “you’re all caught up,” and “I’m getting tangled.” The rolled sleeves finally free of Jack’s arms, the shirt gets tossed in the same direction as Bitty’s.

 

Jack’s chest is smattered with a trail of hair, through which Bitty now scratches his fingers. He’d be content, maybe, to just touch Jack like this, delicate and exploratory, until he’s learned the feel of every patch of him. He draws his nails down Jack’s abdomen, to the waistband of the jeans he never took off the night before. It’s easy, then, and almost logical, to turn his hand to press his palm against Jack’s skin, and slide his hand inside, underneath both jeans and boxer-briefs. He cups Jack’s cock, first hints of hardness settling warm and heavy in his hold.

“ _Ah_ , Bits –”

“I want you,” Bitty murmurs, leaning to kiss at Jack’s chest, at his pectoral muscle which jumps beneath Bitty’s lips, at the edge of his collarbone where the skin is thinner and softer. “I want to love you. I want you to love me.” He returns Jack’s words to him, and Jack responds with his own touch – both hands, tugging at the waistband of Bitty’s shorts, revealing hipbones and the thatch of curls at the base of Bitty’s dick. He keeps pulling, urging Bitty to shuffle closer on the bed, gripping at Jack’s hardness with more confidence, not yet moving, just _holding_.

 

Jack allows his hands to roam around Bitty’s body, driving the shorts down further as he finally grips Bitty’s ass, elastic tucked underneath the muscle.

“Take them off,” Jack mutters, kneading slightly, voice gone thick and impossibly low.

“You too,” Bitty insists. He withdraws his hand, and Jack hisses a little, but then his own hands are off Bitty and on his fly. He flops onto his back to kick out of his jeans, making eye contact with Bitty and giving a wry smile. Bitty feels his nose wrinkle as he giggles, before obliging in wriggling his shorts down his thighs. He mirrors Jack’s position on the bed, tucking knees to his chest to get the shorts off his legs completely, lobbing them towards the building pile of their clothes when he’s done. Next to him, Jack grunts, and when Bitty lowers his legs and looks over, Jack’s jeans and underwear are twisted around his calves.

 

Bitty can’t help but snort a laugh, and although Jack doesn’t look up from where his focus is, he responds with a laugh of his own.

“I swear, I’ve never had this much of a problem undressing before.”

“Oh, you’re good at taking your clothes off usually?”

“A fucking professional, Bittle.”

“Well, everyone needs some help sometimes.”

 

Bitty kneels up again, picking his way down the bed to grab at Jack’s pants and work them down to his ankles. Jack just relinquishes his grip, leaning up on his elbows to watch Bitty’s progress. The jeans finally off, Bitty tosses them over with everything else and crawls up between Jack’s legs.

“What do you – I mean. I don’t know…”

“Come here.” Jack guides him forward while pawing at his thigh, insistent but careful, until Bitty takes his meaning and straddles his hips, bracketed at the front by Jack’s chest, and the back by the bend of his legs. He hovers momentarily, until Jack wraps a loose hand around Bitty’s cock, and Bitty can’t stop himself from settling down completely and grasping wildly at Jack’s shoulders. Jack’s own dick rubs into the cleft of Bitty’s ass, dragging heat and making Bitty choke out something of a grunt.

“Do you want –”

“No – no, this is good. This is…” Jack trails off, dropping his forehead against the junction of Bitty’s neck and shoulder, pairing a twitch of his hips with a tug at Bitty’s cock and breathing out sharp and hot into Bitty’s skin. “Does that feel –?”

“ _Tighter_ ,” Bitty gasps, eyes squeezing shut as Jack re-doubles his grip.

 

“Those shorts you were wearing, when we met,” Jack is muttering into Bitty’s neck, into his jaw, across his clavicle, jerking at Bitty’s cock firm and slow, “you were so funny, so cute and kind, so _hot_. I’ve always been – _ah_!” He breaks off momentarily as Bitty grinds down against his cock, enjoying the tacky thrust of it against his ass. Jack bites at his shoulder, just once, before continuing. “I’ve always been a sucker for irony. And there you were – fucking puck bunny, Jesus, and you’re – you’re so much more than that, Bits, _fuck_ , I love you, I –” he groans again, long and low, free hand flying to Bitty’s ass cheek as he tries to writhe up into Jack’s grip again, finding himself unable to get any real rhythm.

“If I knew it was this easy to get you talking,” he attempts to joke, but it’s almost entirely belied by the way his words come out syrupy, drenched in sex.

 

“I jerked off thinking about your thighs, the morning after.” As though to illustrate his point, Jack runs his hand from Bitty’s ass down his leg, scraping blunt nails and leaving white lines that soon flush red.

“What about my thighs?”

“Touching them. With my hands, with my cock.”

“Oh. You… that’s a thing? Could we do that?”

Jack stills, holding the base of Bitty’s cock, nails digging into Bitty’s thigh. “Do you have – uh, do you have any lube?”

Unconsciously, Bitty looks to his bedside table. “No. I have, um, lotion? I mean, if we’re not – uh. If you’re not going to… like. Inside.”

“No, lotion’s fine.” There’s a shallow furrow in Jack’s brow, a tenseness in his jaw, and although the threads of his dry sarcasm are still detectable in his response, Bitty is a little in awe of how much he’s holding back on; in awe of how much he’s making Jack _feel_.

 

 

 

He taps Jack’s wrist to hint for him to let go, and then slides from Jack’s lap to lean over and retrieve his lotion from the side table. He ends up stomach down on the sheets, the cotton rubbing a little harsh at his hardened dick. Lotion in hand, he’s about to sit back up and give it over to Jack, when a broad hand spreads itself over his lower back. Bitty cranes over his shoulder to find Jack laying on his side, reaching out invitingly.

“Are you comfortable with this? Like this? We can – with your back to me, on our sides?”

Bitty finds himself licking his lips, nodding even as he rolls over and edges himself back against Jack, feeling Jack’s hardness already rubbing against his ass again.

 

Propped up on his elbow and twisting to look behind himself at Jack, Bitty bites into his lip and holds up the tube of lotion.

“Might be easier if you have this. Better vantage point from back there, maybe.”

Jack takes the tube, and leans back to uncap it and squeeze a large dollop into his hand before dropping it unceremoniously onto the bedsheets by Bitty’s stomach. Wordlessly, Bitty hitches his leg up and has to stifle a giggling gasp as Jack smears the lotion on the insides of his thighs.

“This is kind of wildly unsexy,” he comments, even as Jack’s hand brushes up beneath his balls and by his asshole.

“Better than chafing,” Jack murmurs back, pressing a single kiss to Bitty’s shoulder. He urges Bitty to put his knee back down, the mess of lotion cold between his legs. Jack repositions himself, Bitty feeling his chest now, all along his own back. Jack’s hand lays on Bitty’s hip, massaging the remnants of the lotion into the thin skin there. His other arm works underneath Bitty’s torso, wrapping around Bitty’s chest and pressing them together, firm.

“This okay?”

“Yeah,” Bitty breathes, settling more of his weight into Jack’s arms, ignoring the light burn in the elbow propping himself up. With another kiss to Bitty’s shoulder, Jack takes his hand from Bitty’s hip – presumably to position himself, because the next thing Bitty feels is the length of Jack’s cock pushing itself between the press of his thighs. Jack lets out a drawn-out breath, clasping again at Bitty’s hipbone, and starts to thrust.

 

Bitty can feel the slick of both their sweat on his back, can feel how fiery Jack’s skin is when he reaches behind himself to grope at Jack’s thigh. Jack’s grip is raw on his hip, his other arm wrapped around Bitty’s torso from underneath, crossing his chest and pulling him back, keeping that slick of sweat between them. Bitty feels Jack’s teeth in his shoulder, feels Jack’s erection nudging beneath his balls, feels the tensing of Jack’s thigh under his hand as he thrusts between Bitty’s legs.

“Touch me.”

He doesn’t think about saying it, not consciously; it just falls out of his mouth like so many other moans, like every soft _oh_ and gasp he makes, like every grunt and swear of Jack’s.

 

Thankfully, Jack seems to take his meaning easily. He relinquishes his hold on Bitty’s hip, shifting instead to first fondle at Bitty’s balls, then encircle his cock. He adjusts the arm tucking Bitty against his chest, and as he gets jostled firmly against Jack’s body, Bitty slaps his free hand over Jack’s on his heart, and tries to thread their fingers. Around Jack’s shallow thrusts, around the movement of his dick, Bitty clenches his thighs. He tips his head back, allowing Jack to nuzzle into his neck as the embers of this _feeling_ – of Jack, all around him, of being loved, of _loving_ – settle themselves and burn deep into his gut.

 

He knows the lotion is rubbing itself into his skin, knows much of the slickness between his legs is now being provided by tacky sweat and Jack’s pre-come, and as their skin drags, he chokes out, “harder.” Jack obliges, doubling his efforts in both thrusting into the grip of Bitty’s thighs, and in tugging at Bitty’s cock. It hurts, almost, not enough lubrication and too much force, so Bitty slaps his hand away.

“Roll me over, just – face down, like –”

He barely gets it out before Jack is weighting him down into the mattress, canting his hips against Bitty’s ass, outright growling into the knob at the top of Bitty’s spine as he chases his orgasm.

 

Bitty finds encouragement falling out of his mouth – “come on sweetheart, I love you, that’s it, just like that” – and Jack replies in kind, a near-nonsensical string of, “fuck, Bits, you’re so perfect, I love you” groaned against Bitty’s neck.

 

When Jack comes, it spills between Bitty’s legs and against his balls, seeping down onto the sheet underneath him, and some being smeared between his ass cheeks as Jack jerks through it. It’s barely a moment before Jack is gone, the heat and weight of him lifted from Bitty’s body, and he’s manhandling Bitty over onto his back and clambering over him, holding himself up on hands and knees.

 

Bitty watches as, above him, Jack spits into his palm and without a moment’s hesitation resumes his ministrations on Bitty’s dick. Jack’s saliva mingles with his come there, soothing his movements in a way they hadn’t been before, and it _should_ be gross, but it’s also tight and wet and _hot_ so Bitty doesn’t think on it, just claws at Jack’s biceps and moans out his name.

 

His own orgasm rushes up so quickly that the “oh my god” he chokes out is as much out of surprise as anything else. His come splatters across both their stomachs, Jack’s hand not slowing the entire time – not slowing until its movements push just the wrong side of _too much_ and Bitty hisses sharply.

 

Jack takes his hand from Bitty’s cock and fists it in the sheets by his head, staring down with blown-out eyes, breaths still coming ragged. Bitty’s own chest is heaving, what feels like his entire _being_ is throbbing, and he is so in love with this man.

 

It’s Jack who speaks first, only when both their breathing has levelled out and they’re simply sharing smiles.

“I can’t wait to do everything with you.”

There is pure emotion in his voice, and Bitty is thankful that there’s nothing on his hands but his own drying sweat, because it makes it possible to cup Jack’s jaw in his palm and run his thumb over his bottom lip.

 

Bitty keeps his hand there, even as Jack falls to the mattress beside him and Bitty has to roll onto his side to keep him in view. He keeps his hand there, even as a breeze lifts the curtain slightly and sends goosebumps puckering across both their exposed bodies.

 

He keeps his hand there, for who knows how long, until Jack closes his eyes and lets out a sigh and says, “We should clean up. And brush our teeth. I want to kiss you, properly.”

Bitty snorts a small laugh, patting Jack’s cheek and rolling over to climb off his bed. “Luckily, we don’t need to go _out there_ to do that. Shitty shouldn’t be up for hours; we can shower, and then you… you can go.” His voice catches slightly on the last words, and though he hears Jack moving to stand behind him, rubbing a broad hand over his shoulder, he doesn’t turn.

 

He reaches up to cover Jack’s hand with his own, and without even looking back, leads him to the small bathroom that connects his room with Shitty’s. Digging in the cupboard under the sink surrenders a plain packaged toothbrush – one of a few that Shitty has “for emergencies”, next to his stash of condoms. Bitty hands it off to Jack with a wrinkled nose.

“Shitty keeps these for his hookups.”

Jack raises an eyebrow, but accepts the toothbrush and starts to pull the package open. “That’s weirdly considerate, I guess. My buddy Kent has a bar fridge full of Gatorade.”

It shouldn’t make Bitty’s heart clench, to catch Jack’s eye in the mirror as they both brush their teeth. To have to stifle a laugh when Jack jostles their elbows together deliberately. To smell the mint on Jack’s breath when he finishes before Bitty and wraps an arm around Bitty’s chest to nuzzle into his neck.

 

It shouldn’t make Bitty feel _domestic_.

 

Even after spitting into the sink and rinsing out, he doesn’t give into his urge to claim Jack’s mouth with his own. He’s a mess, both of their come dry on him, excess lotion mixed with it and gone gummy between his legs. He pats Jack’s head, and pushes him away lightly so he can turn the shower on. Without a question, Jack steps in right after him.

 

Only when he has made his own body soapy, and has drawn a loofah over Jack’s stomach and scrubbed away the flaky stains of their come, does Bitty reach to thread his hands in Jack’s hair and pull him down into a kiss.

 

The water around them is warm, and Jack’s mouth is warm, and Jack’s touch is warm where it slides over Bitty’s hips to pull him closer. Bitty mirrors him, trailing fingers from Jack’s face to his chest, around to the broadness of his back, down to grip into the meat of his ass. Jack chuckles into his mouth, responding in kind by groping at Bitty too, rolling their hips together and sending a distinct flutter of pleasure to Bitty’s groin.

 

Running his touch up over the muscles of Jack’s back sends rivulets of water cascading over Bitty’s hands. He pulls back, slightly, and it’s also clinging in droplets to Jack’s eyelashes.

“I’ve always wanted to kiss someone in the rain,” Bitty tells him, and Jack clings tighter and draws them both further under the shower to do exactly that.

 

Their mouths slide together, pressure and suction sparking every nerve in Bitty’s lips. He can taste the warm of the water, the more intense heat of Jack’s tongue, the hints of sharp mint. He echoes the delicacy of Jack’s touches, the fine movements of fingers along spines and across planes of skin. He feels Jack’s response to his movements, the slight shudders and the burn he pushes into their kiss.

 

It would continue on, Bitty’s sure, to another round of orgasms and a need for a longer shower, if not for one of the bathroom doors banging open and Shitty’s voice ringing out “sorry Bits, gotta piss.”

 

Bitty rears back and claps a hand over Jack’s mouth. Jack, for his part, raises an eyebrow at him.

“Too much information, Shitty.” His voice sounds high, strangled. Unnatural. Shitty doesn’t seem to notice anything, just sing-songing “nothing I haven’t seen before,” followed by the sound of pee streaming into the toilet.

 

They’re almost in the clear, despite Jack licking Bitty’s palm, and both of them stifling their giggles against each other – but then, Shitty flushes. The shower stream flashes blindingly cold, and as he catches the brunt of the icy torrent on his back, Jack answers it with a loud and unambiguous “shit!”

 

It’s very obviously not Bitty’s voice.

 

There are a few beats of silence, of Jack and Bitty staring at each other with wide eyes and hoping for Shitty to wash his hands and retreat back to his own room. It’s broken when Shitty asks, “Bitty you sly dog, did your voice finally break, or is there a gentleman caller in that shower with you?”

“No, there’s no one. Why would there be anyone?” Bitty’s voice is doing that thing again – the high and strangled thing. He prods at Jack until he shuffles to the other end of the tub, the one closer to his own bedroom. It won’t solve anything, but it feels like some sort of achievement. Though Jack allows himself to be hustled, he does fix Bitty with a bewildered look.

“Bitty my dude, you’re a shithouse liar. I can see both your shadows through the curtain.”

Staying still doesn’t help, only getting Shitty to goad “I can still see you,” and Jack to roll his eyes. Bitty pokes him, and he pokes back, and they’d probably devolve into some sort of play-fighting if they weren’t wet and naked beneath a gradually cooling stream of water.

 

“Okay,” Bitty near-shouts, at the height of exasperation. “Go back in your room, and we’ll get dressed, and then we can… talk, I guess.” Everything in him is screaming that this is a bad idea that will end terribly for all three of them, and if the frantic shaking of his head is any indication, Jack seems to agree. Bitty shuts off the water and looks up at him with his lip between his teeth, trying to imbue some silent plea into his expression. It seems to work, if the way Jack reaches to gently stroke his cheek is any indication.

“If you and your fella aren’t out here in two minutes, I’m breaking into your room when you least expect it and rubbing my naked genitals all over that stuffed rabbit you think we don’t know about.” The threat is punctuated by a near-slam of his bathroom door.

 

“Is he – was he being serious?”

“Absolutely, yes. It’s okay, sweetheart, we just need to be quick – you do that thing you do and go out by the roof, and I’ll hide Señor Bun so the likes of Shitty will never find him.” He’s trying to sound decisive, certain, but the wobble on his vowels is wholly betraying. Out of the tub and opening his own bedroom door with the intention of ushering Jack through, Bitty looks back to tell him to hurry up and finds himself being watched with a wistful expression. Jack’s eyes are soft, and a small near-secret smile curves his mouth.

“What?”

“What if we just told him?”

Bitty chokes on his answering laugh and ducks into his room to start dressing. He doesn’t bother with underwear, simply tugging the sweats he retrieves from his dresser over bare hips. Once Jack has left, he doesn’t see himself wanting to do anything but lounge around in bed all day feeling sorry for himself. Underwear isn’t really required for that. When he looks back to Jack, he’s pulled on his discarded jeans and is buttoning his shirt.

 

“I’m serious, you know. You trust him?”

Bitty ducks his head in a non-committal, non-verbal reply, and drags a hoodie on over his newly-placed Samwell t-shirt.

“I don’t want you to be all alone here. And… yesterday, when. When they came to see us, at La Croix? Shitty tried to break up the fight. He wanted to take Kent to hospital.” The recollection seems to jerk something in Jack’s mind, and his expression washes over stony for a brief moment.

“But that was before you hit Holster in the head.” It comes out harsher than Bitty intends. Jack just nods gravely in response.

“I know he probably won’t like it – I get that. But at least if we tell him, you’ll have someone in your corner.”

Bitty mulls it over as Jack ties his shoes, arms wrapped around his middle and teeth working furiously over his lip. By the time Jack straightens up, he’s resolved.

“Alright. Fine. Seeing as you’ve got a plane to catch, and I – I definitely wouldn’t mind having someone to direct my longing lamentations to. Señor Bun is only so much of an audience when he can’t really make a reply.”

“You keep mentioning this rabbit; is this something I get to –?”

“ _Well_. I suppose so, eventually. If you’re going to be sticking around.”

“For as long as you want me, Bits.”

 

It’s almost stupidly easy, then, to take Jack’s hand and lead him back through the bathroom toward Shitty’s room. When Bitty raises his free hand to knock on Shitty’s door, Jack leans down and leaves a swift kiss at the nape of his neck. It’s a bolster, and when Shitty opens the door to them and his first words are “oh, holy fuck,” Bitty is still able to smile. He feels his heart rabbiting in his chest, and his palm going sweaty against Jack’s, but despite the tremors and nerves, he is still able to smile.

“Shitty? You know Jack Zimmermann. Well, me and Jack are dating.”


	5. act v

The fact that it takes Bob more than twenty-four hours to present his proposition is, frankly, impressive. Jack tells him as much, when his dad pulls him out to the backyard rink for goal practice and a heart-to-heart.

“I just think you need to be looking to what’s going to benefit you most, in the long-run.”

“And transferring with less than a year left – that’s going to make me seem stable to prospective teams?” He buries the puck in the net between his dad’s legs. Bob throws him a curt-but-approving “shot” before sending the puck back with a deft flick.

 

“You’re an adult and I’m not going to tell you what to do. Just know that my advice – and, for what it’s worth, your mother agrees with me – is to put yourself first. This incident is something that can be smoothed over directly with GMs. But only if you demonstrate to them that you’re separate from all this –”

“I literally started it, dad.” It comes out harsh, biting, and Jack punctuates it with a decidedly vicious shot that clips Bob’s knee before hitting the back of the net. “If I don’t own up to that, you know as well as I do that there’s no fucking way I’m getting offers.”

 

“It’s early in the season,” Bob sends back with the puck, measured and careful. Considering. Jack isn’t quite sure what he’s getting at, and he doesn’t especially want to ask.

 

The puck travels silently between them uncountable times over the next five minutes, Jack sinking most of what he shoots, aided by Bob’s age-weakened reflexes. Though when he aims for one top-shelf and eats post, grinding out a thick-tongued “ _fuck_ ” and tapping his stick a little too rough on the ice, Bob sighs and straightens up.

“I can have your uncle on the phone right now, you know. Get something secure, and then you can make your actual decisions later.”

Jack closes his eyes. The breath he drags in stings a little: further north like they are, the cold of Fall is actually starting to bite. “You want me to cash in on your name?”

“I want you to use the resources at your disposal. You don’t have to be a martyr.”

 

“It’s too far.” Jack tips his head back, and opens his eyes, and the sky is white – overcast, but bright. He remembers muted yellow light and long shadows, and suppresses a sigh.

“Too far from…?”

“Bitty.”

“Ah.”

 

Gaze cast back up to the house, Jack catches his mother at the kitchen window. She appears to be watching them, drinking a cup of coffee. She doesn’t even seem chastised at being spotted, instead tipping her mug in Jack’s direction like a toast. He huffs a laugh, despite himself.

 

“Listen, Jack.” Bob clears his throat, so Jack turns to him again. “Son. Surely this – I mean, being secret before was one thing. But now, after you’ve both got teammates injured, and with you having to play against each other… You’ve got to think big picture. Long term. I think with an established team, good cup prospects, reasonable cap space… You shouldn’t have things holding you back.” He shifts a little, perhaps uncomfortable under Jack’s unblinking stare, and coughs gruffly. “It’s your choice, but remember – I’m only thinking about you.”

 

Jack blinks, finally. Looks up to his mom. Looks back to his dad.

“This is your honest opinion?”

“You know I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t think it was best.”

“Right. Well. You’re right,” Jack says. _You’re wrong_ , he thinks. “I’ll go back, for the game. And then afterwards, win or lose – I’ll call Mario.” It’s a white lie, like _I’ve already written thank you notes for my bar mitzvah presents_ , or _there wasn’t any alcohol at the party_. It makes Jack feel juvenile, but the outcome will be the same no matter what his dad believes of him right then: the thank you notes were sent; Jack drank while underage; he will find his way back to Bitty, somehow.

 

\---

 

Bitty spends spare daylight hours at Faber, and spare nighttime hours talking to Jack. They leave things unsaid: Jack doesn’t say when he will be returning, and Bitty doesn’t ask; Bitty doesn’t mention his attempts at checking practice, and Jack doesn’t ask.

 

What checking practice has become, in Jack’s absence, is Shitty trying to be rough and menacing as he jostles Bitty against the boards, all the while releasing an endless tirade along the lines of “I don’t get the point of this, fuck.”

 

Needless to say, Bitty vastly preferred Jack’s serious-yet-loving approach.

 

Bitty isn’t sure it makes any difference. There’s no real way to tell, seeing as his ice time has barely increased. He does, however, score his first goal of the year. Jack fills up his voicemail inbox by the time Bitty gets back to the locker room, and their phone call that night is filled with muffled, vaguely-teary congratulations, and muffled, vaguely-teary thanks. In terms of checking, however, Bitty largely resorts to his old method of spins and ducks.

 

The game against La Croix looms, then towers, and then breathes down Bitty’s neck.

 

The night before, he finds himself out in the Reading Room with Shitty, breathing misted in the chill. It seems unseasonable, even though it’s not: the warm of the previous weeks had been what was uncharacteristic. Still, Bitty finds himself sighing with relief as the chill settles itself in his bones. There had been something suspended in the heat, some kind of tension.

“You’re superstitious,” Shitty tells him.

“I’m Southern,” Bitty retorts.

 

They sit in companionable silence, the only thing discernible to Bitty’s ears being Shitty’s slow exhalations and the faint smacking sound of his lips on his joint.

“You know –" Shitty’s voice comes through overly-loud, and Bitty suppresses his urge to look over his shoulder – “I think everything’s going to be fine.”

 

It seems like a cue, so Bitty rolls to his feet and pats Shitty on the shoulder. He climbs back through to his room, and flops onto his bed, and is asleep within minutes.

 

\---

 

Seeing Jack for the first time in weeks – seeing him really, not pixelated on a laptop screen, but moving fluidly and with all the definition of being _there_ – makes Bitty’s heart stop.

 

That there are boards and ice and players between them doesn’t seem to matter. Bitty sits on the bench, and Jack leans into his game-opening faceoff against Einhardt, and casts the briefest of looks over his shoulder. It’s absurd to think that he would be looking at Bitty, absurd to think they could make any sort of contact from this distance, and yet –

 

There is a set to Jack’s shoulders, something natural and relaxed and confident, that makes Bitty sure he was seen.

“Put your tongue back in your head,” Shitty hisses at him, and Bitty jolts. He feels his guilt coloring itself into his cheeks, and casts Shitty what he hopes is a sheepish-yet-endearing look.

 

“You can ogle him after we trounce these fuckers and he needs consolation. Some good, hard consolation.” Shitty emphasizes the suggestion with a bitten lip, closed eyes, and theatrical groan. Bitty elbows him, sending him jostling into Wicks, who emits a startled “bro!” and jostles back.

 

It’s enough of a distraction that they both miss the play that puts Jack right in the slot, until he collects a pass and flicks the puck to the air between Chowder’s legs. Quick reflexes on Chowder’s part send it ricocheting back, but the fact of them being barely two minutes into the game with Jack already making shots at goal – it’s a little sobering, as far as the team’s prospects go.

 

A hand claps onto Bitty’s shoulder, and he rears back to find himself looking up at Coach Hall.

“Bittle, I want you to take Oluransi’s pass, run it down your lane. Protect the puck and move it as far as you can before Zimmermann catches up.”

There’s some irony in the directive, it being that now Bitty’s job is to run away from Jack. Bitty suppresses a smirk, instead nodding gravely at his coach and preparing himself to drop onto the ice. Einhardt crashes back in, and Bitty clambers over the boards, and he puts the speed on to get himself where Dex is running the puck down the wing.

 

Bitty shares the ice with his boyfriend for all of fifteen seconds before Jack collides with Dex from behind in an attempt to get possession, and earns two minutes in the sin bin for his troubles. He’s clearly frustrated with himself, mouth making the shapes of curses, and Bitty’s heartrate spikes uncomfortably.

 

La Croix are nothing if not loyal, and with their Captain being penalized – well. There are always ways of exacting revenge.

 

Bitty wonders idly, as he tries to work himself free of the pack and open himself up for a pass, if Jack told any of his teammates anything. If he said anything, under the guise of captainly advice, to persuade them into playing a clean game.

 

If that is the case, they evidently haven’t heeded his advice: Bitty takes possession of the puck off a pass from Ransom, and starts to attempt to move it down the ice, until one of Jack’s d-men – Douglas, and Jack had said they call him Dougie, and he’s one of Jack’s roommates and he likes to play pranks and he can’t cook to save his life – nudges him in the side and sends him to his knees.

 

He shakes there a moment, staring down at the ice and knowing the puck is gone, the roaring in his ears not from the crowd. Bitty breathes in, and remembers the cadence of Jack’s voice telling him to _push off and skate through_ , and clambers back to his feet.

 

His route towards the puck sends him past the box, and he chances a glance to the side, and the fleeting image of Jack _cheering_ and _clapping_ and _not caring_ , it’s –

 

Bitty collects the puck from Ransom again, and doubles back behind the crease, and readies to shoot it off to where Ollie is free in the slot.

 

He sees Spencer coming in through his periphery, bending low and bracing with his shoulder. The accuracy of the shot is the least of Bitty’s worries, but he still watches its progress as it connects with the tape on Ollie’s stick. Its journey after that, though, is lost to him.

 

Spencer’s bulk slamming into Bitty’s stomach pushes all his breath free and makes a force clamp down over his lungs that seals them shut – at least for a moment. There’s a jarring of his knees and ankles as his body is knocked sideways, but it’s only fleeting as they’re yanked perpendicular again. Unfortunately, that also means they’re in the air; all of him is, firm lurch of his gut confirming it. The sick taste in his mouth precedes the impact.

 

It feels slow, but probably only takes a fraction of a second, and Bitty is aware the whole time.

 

When his helmet is knocked free, he thinks briefly, _that’s not good_.

 

He doesn’t feel the ice.

 

\---

 

Jack forces his way out of the sin bin with, to his perception, no one making an attempt to stop him.

 

He’s across the ice and pushing Bitty’s crowding team mates aside with little thought, knocking his own helmet from his head, shaking his gloves free, and crashing to his knees next to Bitty where he’s fallen. Bitty’s helmet is lying a few feet away. His eyes are closed.

 

 

Someone is muttering “no,” endlessly and frantically, and Jack hears the echo of it in his own head. It’s not until the same voice yells “ _crisse_ ,” loud and raw, that he realizes it’s him. He doesn’t lift Bitty from the ice, knows not to do that, but leans over him and tries to cradle his body without moving it. The hand that he attempts to curl under Bitty’s head, tries to use to separate it even slightly from the cold, meets wet warmth.

 

 _Head wounds always bleed a lot_ , he remembers.

 

His touch spreads the blood to Bitty’s face, smudging it over his cheeks as Jack tries to stroke response from his skin. It makes him groan out again, the sound ragged and wrought. Animalistic, even to his own ears.

 

“Jack, the meds need to get him off the ice.” It’s Shitty, tentative and close to Jack’s ear. His hand lands on Jack’s shoulder, and he shakes it off roughly.

“No, they can’t move him – his neck. His head. They shouldn’t move him.” They should know that, the medics. They should know you’re not supposed to move someone with a head injury, not while they’re unconscious. Bitty’s eyes still haven’t opened.

“They know, man. They’ve got a neck brace. It’s okay. Jack, come on.”

 

Jack looks up, finally, and sees that behind Shitty, behind the attending paramedics, the entirety of both their teams are hovering. There are worried faces – Bitty’s teammates – a lot of blank expressions, some discernibly confused ones, and then there’s Spencer.

 

Jack’s on his feet and cutting a path towards his winger before he really registers what Spencer’s face is doing. He does hear Shitty calling his name, and he feels the hands snatching for the back of his jersey, but it’s not enough to keep him from colliding with Spencer and driving him back against the glass with a tight grip on his collar.

“Woah, Cap –”

“I’m not your fucking Captain. You’re not on this team anymore.”

Spencer sputters something, and so Jack shakes him, brutal.

“If you want to know what Bittle’s experiencing right now, say one more word. You like it rough? My gloves are already off. Come on. Tempt me, Spence. Do it.”

 

Spencer sputters something again, and so Jack slams his head back into the glass.

 

There’s a firm hand on his shoulder pulling him back, then multiple people gripping his jersey and hauling him away. The red-and-white sleeves that encircle him confirm they’re not his own teammates – they’re Bitty’s.

“Come on, Jack. They’ve taken him off. It’s okay. They’re looking him over. It’s not as bad as it seemed.” It’s not Shitty’s voice that tells him this, but Jack can’t bring himself to check who it is. He allows them to drag him back, leaving Spencer white-faced and leaning heavily on the boards.

“Not as bad as it seemed.” He repeats it, hollowly.

“His eyes were open when they gurneyed him off. He’ll probably have a concussion, but he was out less than a minute.”

Less than a minute? It had felt longer. Jack blinks to look to his side at whoever has been talking to him, and finds Oluransi watching him with a somber grimace.

 

“The ref wants you off the ice. Come on, man.”

“Shit. I –” Jack swallows. It goes sticky, but it goes. “Spencer?”

“He’s fine too. Not as strong as you look, eh buddy?”

 

Oluransi herds him not back to the bench, but to the tunnel. The directive is clear.

“Is he – is he back there? They haven’t taken him –”

“Yeah, buddy. But you’re out, too. You know how it is.”

The small, logical voice in Jack’s brain – the one that speaks in French and sounds not unlike his father – tells him, _of course_. Just because the fight he started wasn’t with an opposing team member doesn’t mean it wasn’t a fight.

 

His skates meet the rubber floor surface of the tunnel, and Oluransi’s hand leaves his shoulder. Jack turns, and offers him what feels like a tenuous smile. He raises a hand to wipe over his clammy lips, but his fingers are still tinted with Bitty’s blood. The smile slips away.

“Uh – thanks. Just. Um.” Jack reaches up, and knocks his fist lightly into Oluransi’s shoulder. “Thanks.”

He gets a shrugged reply, and a mirrored attempt at a smile, and a punch to his own arm.

 

Jack continues, off the ice, down the tunnel, towards Bitty.

 

The rumble of the crowd follows him, but every shuffled step Jack takes away from it pulls away a thread of the tension in his back. A thread, for the game he’ll be suspended for fighting Spencer. A thread, for the conversations he’ll have with GMs to explain it away. A thread, for sharing what Bitty means to him with the world.

 

A thread for Bitty’s blood on his hands. A thread for Bitty’s head on the ice. A thread for Bitty’s closed eyes.

 

The door to the Samwell trainers’ room is flung wide open. There is one medic, and Bitty sits on a bench, and his eyes are open and tracking the movements of the medic’s fingers. His gaze slides to the door, and lands on Jack, and his intake of breath is audible.

“Can – can he come in?”

The medic glances back, and barely raises an eyebrow, but nods regardless. He scoops a clipboard from the bench next to Bitty, and mutters something like, “I’ll be back in a moment.” Jack has to enter the room to allow him to leave, and doesn’t stop moving until he’s at Bitty’s side.

 

His heart beats against his ribs, but his hands have stopped shaking. Bitty smiles at him.

“Jack. I got up again.”

“I always knew you would.” Jack says it through an answering smile, and he takes Bitty’s hand in his own, and he feels light.


End file.
